Apex court upholds sentence

Court gives the benefit of doubt to Geelani, endorses the acquittal of Afsan Guru

The Supreme Court today confirmed death sentence on Mohammad Afzal, one of the conspirators in the Parliament attack case, but saved his cousin Shaukat Hussain Guru from the gallows and awarded him 10-year rigorous imprisonment.

It gave the benefit of doubt to Delhi University lecturer SAR Geelani and upheld the Delhi High Court acquittal in his case. The court also endorsed the acquittal of Afsan Guru, wife of Shaukat Hussain.

The apex court Bench comprising Justice PV Reddi and Justice PP Naolekar delivered the 271-page judgment in a packed court room.

The hearing had went on for five months, one of the longest in the apex court's history. Both the Delhi Police and the accused had appealed against the Delhi High Court orders.

The Supreme Court did not give a clean acquittal to Geelani stating that there was a needle of suspicion against him and his conduct was not above board. Butthere was no direct evidence to convict him.

Geelani's conduct at the time of the incident was "disturbing" and created a "serious suspicion" about his role as he appeared to have approved the terrorist act.

His pleas about his contacts with Mohammad Afzal and Shaukat Hussain were untruthful.

Justice Reddi, who read out parts of the judgment, said Afzal deserved the extreme penalty for the diabolical act of attacking Parliament.

This was a "classic" case deserving death penalty, which is given in the rarest of rare cases. There was clinching evidence against him for his links with the terrorists who were shot dead in the attack four years ago.

"All evidence unerringly point to Afzal, a key conspirator, who played an active role," the judgment observed, adding that "the collective conscience of society will be satisfied only if the death penalty is awarded to Afzal."

The manner in which he conspired to wage war against the nation and the support he extended for carrying out the criminal conspiracy made him a "menace to the society", the judgment said.

Shaukat, who was awarded death penalty by both the trial court and the high court, got a fresh lease of life as the apex court while holding him guilty of having knowledge of the conspiracy, found that he had not participated in the hatching of the plot to attack Parliament.

The court took into account the "helping hand" lent by him to Afzal to flee Delhi but concluded that the evidence on record was "not sufficient to establish his complicity" in the crime and to link him to the activity of his cousin Afzal.

"The irresistible conclusion arising from the evidence on record is that he knew about the conspiracy, he was aware of Afzal's activities and there is a high degree of probability that he knew about the impending attack on Parliament," the Bench said while convicting him for not disclosing these to the authorities.

Setting aside the extreme punishment awarded to him, the Bench found him guilty under Section 123 of the Indian Penal Code for not informing the police or the magistrate about the conspiracy to launch an attack on Parliament and sentenced him to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.