MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday sentenced Mohammed Hanifa alias ‘Tenkasi’ Hanifa, one of the key accused in the alleged planting of pipe bomb during former home minister LK Advani’s rath yatra in Madurai in 2011, to five years of rigorous imprisonment in a case registered against him for trying to murder the investigating officer of the above case during his arrest.
A bench of Justices P Velmurugan and L Victoria Gowri imposed the punishment by setting aside Hanifa’s acquittal by the Principal Sessions Judge of Dindigul in 2018.
According to the prosecution, Hanifa was absconding in the pipe bomb case and a non-bailable warrant was pending against him. The then Deputy Superintendent of Police M Karthikeyan of the Special Investigation Team, Madurai CBCID, who was the investigating officer of the pipe bomb case, had received information that Hanifa was hiding at Batlagundu in Dindigul.
On July 8, 2013, at 10 am, Karthikeyan and his team went to arrest Hanifa. In his attempt to flee, Hanifa had attacked the DSP with a long knife, but the officer escaped unscathed and the other police personnel managed to apprehend him. Based on his confession, the police had recovered detonators, gel bags, knives and a suspected hit list.
However, the trial court acquitted him on December 20, 2018, citing lack of independent witnesses and some contradictions in the evidence of prosecution witnesses.
After an elaborate hearing, the division bench concluded that the prosecution has proved the case beyond reasonable doubt. The team of officers had gone to the accused’s hideout secretly to arrest him and in such circumstances, it is not possible for them to produce independent witnesses, the bench said. The trial court cannot discard the evidence of the official witnesses unless they are found to be unreliable, it added.
The contradictions cited are also very minor and immaterial to the prosecution’s case, the judges further observed and convicted Hanifa for the above offences including Section 16(1)(b) of UAPA.
