Sarabjit Singh's mercy petition quashed

janab-e-ali · June 24, 2009, 9:28am

For instance, there is a major discrepancy between the Delhi police’s version of the time and place of Afzal’s arrest, and the Jammu and Kashmir police records. The police failed to establish Afzal’s critical or pivotal role in the conspiracy. Indeed, they did not even identify the five attackers, who were shot dead.

Afzal confessed to having helped the attackers’ “leader” Mohammed to come to Delhi from Srinagar and purchase a car used in the attack. But Afzal was not shown to be the mastermind or chief conspirator.

Besides his own testimony, which the Supreme Court says cannot be relied upon, circumstantial evidence of Afzal’s involvement in conspiracy hinges on the recovery of explosives from his house, and most crucially, on the records of cellphone calls to the five attackers.

However, the explosives recovery record is not watertight. The police could not explain why they broke into Afzal’s house while he was in jail - when his landlord had the key.

The cellphone record traced several calls from the five men to a particular Delhi number. The police allegedly impounded the instrument from Afzal while arresting him in Srinagar. The instrument had no SIM card. So the only identity mark was its machine number, which is unique to each instrument.

But how did the police discover the machine number? There are only two ways: open the instrument, or dial a code and have the number displayed. But the officer who certified the recovery said on oath that he neither opened nor operated the instrument.

Besides, the testimonies on the date of purchase of the phone with a new SIM card (December 4) and its first recorded operation (November 6) did not match. The evidence is certainly not firm enough to award Afzal the severest possible punishment.

Equally important is the legal point that during his trial, Afzal was not allowed to have a defence lawyer of his choice and was forced to cross-examine witnesses himself.

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