Hyderabad: Seventeen years after a bomb blast killed 14 people and left a 58 others injured at Hyderabad’s iconic Mecca Masjid, the city’s social activists have demanded that the case be reopened and a thorough trial be conducted by the State government.
The attack took place when the worshippers in the mosque had gathered to offer Friday prayers. The perpetrators of the heinous crime are yet to be brought to justice.
Calling the investigation into the Mecca Masjid bomb blast case a travesty of justice, the activists have demanded that the state file an intervention petition in the Telangana High Court against the acquittal of the accused in the case.
On Saturday, the 17th anniversary of the terror attack, social activists SQ Masood, Mounis Abidi, Kaneez Fathima, Sarah Mathews, Khalida Parveen and Ali Asghar urged the State government to table the report of the Bhaskar Rao Commission, which had made damning observations about the police’s conduct during the terror attack.
It may be recalled that while nine persons were killed in the bomb blast, five more people died in police firing when they gathered at the mosque in the immediate aftermath of the bomb blast.
While the evidence gathered by the Hussaini Alam police and the CBI had pointed to the involvement of Hindutva elements in the blast, the charge sheet of NIA had named five people including Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Aseemanand. After a long trial, the Special NIA Court acquitted all the accused in April 2018.
Expressing their shock at the Union Ministry of Home Affairs choosing not to appeal the verdict, the social activists stated that even when the victims attempted to file an appeal in the High Court against the acquittal, the NIA special prosecutor had objected to it on the grounds of maintainability of the plea.
“Parallelly, the government of undivided Andhra Pradesh constituted the V Bhaskar Rao Commisison in June 2007 to probe into the role of police in the firing of protesters. However, neither the Congress in the undivided Andhra Pradesh nor the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi) that governed Telangana until a few months ago released this report,” the activists claimed.
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