A Cuttack court on Tuesday acquitted a 37-year-old school teacher who had been jailed under the anti-terrorism law since 2015, holding that the prosecution had “miserably failed” to prove any of the charges against him despite interrogating 46 witnesses and relying on 55 documents.
Cuttack District and Sessions Judge Manas Ranjan Parikh acquitted Muhammad Abdul Rahman Ali Khan, also known as Maulana Mansoor, of all charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Section 124-A (Sedition) of the Indian Penal Code. Rahman was accused of recruiting young people for Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and was accused of terrorism, financing terrorism, and recruiting young people for a terrorist group.
The judge criticized the prosecution’s case, blaming the police for only making “scandalous statements” about Rehman’s alleged membership in AQIM, his alleged ties with Lashkar-e-Toiba commander Zakirur Rahman Lakhvi, and his alleged travel to Pakistan without producing a single document to support any of them.
“Not a single scrap of paper was produced to support his evidence regarding the accused’s travel to Pakistan,” the court said. Rahman’s passport showed no evidence of any such travel.
Regarding the tracking of the funds, the court found that the investigating officer did not examine any deposit in Rahman’s personal bank accounts or in the Al-Haramain Credit Foundation account, was unable to determine the purpose of making the deposits, and did not trace any transfer from the credit account to any organization or individual for any illegal purpose.
The audio CD, which allegedly contained a provocative speech by Rahman, recovered and copied with the help of an Urdu teacher from Ravenshaw Collegiate School, also did not show anything related to terrorism. The court found that the speech, after careful reading of Odia and Urdu texts, contained religious content urging Muslims to follow their faith and not fear dissent.
Seventeen of the prosecution’s 46 witnesses turned hostile, with many saying that Rahman had only imparted Islamic teachings and had never heard him speak against any religion.
Applying the standard laid down in Asif Iqbal Tanha v. State of NCT Delhi by the Delhi High Court, the court held that the definition of “terrorist act” under Section 15 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, though broad, “cannot be permitted to be applied incidentally to criminal acts or omissions that fall squarely within the definition of conventional crimes”.
