KOCHI: Ending the 17-year-old mystery shrouding the disappearance of Chekannur Moulavi, the CBI Special Court on Wednesday held first accused P V Hamsa guilty of murder.
The court, however, acquitted all the other accused in the case.
Issuing the order, CBI Special Judge S Vijayakumar observed that the fourth accused Muhammed Basheer was acquitted on grounds of doubt regarding the question of identity. The sentence will be pronounced on Thursday.
All the nine accused were present in the court on Wednesday.
“Criminals seeking to achieve a stage of being wiser than the criminal law in the present day world of personal grudge, religious rivalries and physical violence cannot be allowed at any rate in a developed criminal legal system as ours,” the court observed.
“The abduction itself was the result of a conspiracy of some fundamental Muslim individuals who could not tolerate the so-called progressive philosophies of Chekannur.
They preferred to put an end to the philosopher rather than debating and defeating the philosophy,” the court observed. ‘’It is established that P V Hamsa along with the other unidentified coabductors entered into a criminal conspiracy for the murder of Moulavi,’’ the court said.
P V Hamsa, along with his companion, abducted Moulavi with a motive to murder him, took him to a secret place and murdered him and disposed of his body, the court said.
"The fact that the other conspirators or co-abductors could not be correctly traced and brought to book for trial doesn’t in any way stand in convicting Hamsa,’’ the court said.
The court charged P V Hamsa with Sec 302 (murder), 120 B (conspiracy) read with 302, 364 (abduction), 201 (destruction of evidence) of IPC. Moulavi was abducted from his home at Edappal in Malappuram district on July 29, 1993 .