HYDERABAD: In a huge relief to AIMIM floor leader in Telangana Assembly Akbaruddin Owaisi, the special court for the trial of cases against MPs and MLAs at Hyderabad on Wednesday acquitted him in two hate speech cases registered against him in 2013.
“There isn’t sufficient evidence to prove the cases against the accused. There is no link between the chain of video evidence related to the alleged provocative speech,” K Jayakumar, Special Sessions Judge, said while delivering the verdict.
The courtroom was packed on Wednesday but Owaisi’s supporters refrained from any celebrations after the verdict. In both incidents, the cases were registered after a long delay of 25 days and 10 days in Nirmal and Nizamabad respectively.
The court also warned Akbaruddin to against making provocative speeches in future in the interest of national integrity and also directed him not to hold any celebrations in view of the acquittal.
While Akbaruddin was the lone accused in the case related to the speech delivered in Nizamabad, Yahya Khan was the other accused in the case related to the speech delivered in Nirmal. Both speeches were delivered in Urdu during public meetings organised in December, 2012.
After the videos of the speech went viral on social media platforms, police swung into action and registered suo moto cases against him in both incidents on January 2, 2013. On January 8, a week after the FIRs were registered, Akbaruddin was arrested while he was undergoing treatment at Gandhi Hospital in Secunderabad.
He was first arrested in the Nirmal case and later his arrest was effected in the Nizamabad case through a PT warrant. He was lodged in Nirmal prison.
After over a month, Akbaruddin was released on conditional bail. Later, cases were also registered at Osmania University police station in Hyderabad and a private case was registered in Delhi. However, the High Court directed that the three cases registered at Nizamabad, Osmania University police station and Delhi be clubbed into one and investigated by the CID.
Accordingly, the investigation was taken up by respective police wings. In the Nirmal case, a chargesheet was filed in a court at Adilabad in 2018. Initially, charges under sedition and waging war against the State were also included in the case, but they were dropped while filing the chargesheet as the contents of the alleged speech did not attract the relevant provisions of the Act.
Later the case was transferred to the Special Court at Nampally. The CID had also filed a charge sheet in the competent court in 2016, which was later transferred to the special court, after recording the evidence of a few witnesses in the case.
At the special court, the trial in the CID case began in October, 2020 and the Nirmal case began in the second half of 2021. Since then, the trial has been taken up on a regular basis, during which the prosecution and the defence counsels presented their arguments before the court.