Fourteen years after his arrest over alleged links with Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Indian Mujahedin (IM), Mohammad Abdur Raheman Ali Khan was acquitted by a sessions court in Cuttack on Tuesday, which observed that no convincing and substantial material had been produced before it to establish his involvement with the terrorist organisations.
Raheman, a native of Satabatia village under Jagatpur police station limits in Odisha’s Cuttack district, had been arrested on December 17, 2012, in a joint operation conducted by the Odisha Police and the special cell of the Delhi Police, following allegations that he had indulged in terrorist activities, mobilised funds for such operations and propagated anti-national sentiments through his madrasa situated at Bilteruan village, The Indian Express reported.
The prosecution had invoked stringent provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, while also accusing him of maintaining links with AQIS and IM, recruiting individuals through the madrasa network and receiving foreign funds for purportedly subversive activities.
The case, initially registered at Jagatpur police station before being transferred to the Crime Branch of the Odisha Police, witnessed a protracted legal trajectory, with the chargesheet being filed only in December 2016 and charges formally framed on September 13, 2017.
In its order acquitting Raheman, the court categorically held that nothing had emerged during the trial to demonstrate that he had received funds from within or outside the country for terrorist purposes, or that he had raised money for organisations such as AQIS or IM, while further observing that the prosecution had failed to furnish credible evidence regarding his alleged association with notorious terrorists or any purported visit to Pakistan.
“Not a single scrap of convincing evidence is there,” the court remarked, concluding that the accusations remained unsubstantiated despite years of investigation and prosecution.
Raheman, however, continues to remain convicted in a separate National Investigation Agency case in Delhi, for which he had earlier been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.