Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court has dismissed the plea filed by a convict in the 1992 murder of former Congress MP Rauf Valiullah, challenging the rejection of his remission application by the state government, noting that the petitioner was part of a syndicate involved in illegal activities.
Justice MR Mengdey rejected the plea of the convict, Iqbal Hussain Dhobi, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by a special TADA court in 2007 for the murder of then-Rajya Sabha MP and Gujarat Congress leader Valiullah.
“The petitioner was part of a syndicate involved in unlawful activities, and the deceased was done to death since he was taking keen interest in seeing that the accused in another offence of murder were convicted,” the court noted in its order passed on August 20 and uploaded on the HC website on Monday.
The HC said it had recently rejected the plea of another co-accused in the case, Mohammad Umar Majid Ahemad Pathan, challenging the state government’s rejection of his remission application.
Dhobi was one of the seven accused who were sentenced to life imprisonment by the TADA court in 2007 for the murder of Valiullah. They were acquitted of charges under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987, but were sentenced under sections on murder, among others, under the Indian Penal Code.
Dhobi’s lawyer submitted before the HC that the petitioner has undergone incarceration for a period of more than 23 years and his conduct in jail is reported to be good, having absconded only on one occasion.
He further submitted that the petitioner’s case stands on a different footing from that of the other co-accused, who have been denied relief of remission by the apex court as well as the HC.
“The co-accused, who have been declined relief, are the main accused in the offence, whereas the petitioner has been implicated in the present offence only in view of the provisions of section 120B of the IPC (criminal conspiracy). The petitioner herein has not played any active role in actual commission of crime,” his lawyer submitted, as noted by the court.
On August 3, 1992, one Hansraj Trivedi, an alleged supplier of illicit liquor, and eight others were gunned down at Radhika Gymkhana Club in Ahmedabad. Gangster Abdul Latif and his gang members were alleged to be behind the killings.
Following a public outcry against alleged police inaction in the case, Latif planned to make some of his gang members surrender to save the real culprits, the prosecution had then told the court.
For this purpose, he sought the help of a local politician, but the plan could not succeed because of Valiullah, it said.
Valiullah is said to have prepared a memorandum to be submitted to the central government exposing “criminal-political nexus in the state,” the prosecution had said.
To prevent him from doing so, Latif and gang decided to eliminate Valiullah and to create terror among people so that no one could come forward to oppose the plan of surreptitious surrender. The task was entrusted to gangster Rasoolkhan Yakubkhan Pathan and his associates, it said.
On October 9, 1992, four members of Pathan’s gang shot the then-MP. The case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which filed a chargesheet under sections of the IPC, TADA and the Arms Act, leading to the conviction and sentencing of seven accused.
Latif was killed in a police encounter in Ahmedabad in 1997.
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