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Principal District and Sessions Judge, Udhampur, R S Jain, on Thursday awarded life imprison to Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Abdul Majeed for engineering a car bomb explosion which killed one and injured half a dozen others on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway near Udhampur town in May 2010.
Before announcing his verdict, the judge drew a balance sheet of aggravating and mitigating factors in the case. “The aggravating factors are that the offence was committed in a pre-planned manner,’’ he pointed out, adding that “the mitigating factors are that the convict Abdul Majeed is not involved in any other criminal case and he is 63 years old’’.
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Holding that the case in hand “certainly does not fall within the category of rarest of the rare case,’’ the judge observed that if awarded life imprisonment, the convict would be considered if at all for remission of sentence at a stage, when he would have suffered incarceration for 15 years.
The terrorist was held guilty by the court last week. Public Prosecutor Naresh Bhagat had appeared for the state in the case.
Abdul Majeed along with another Lashkar terrorist Ghulam Sarwar had carried out a car bomb explosion at Birma Pull on the outskirts of Udhampur town in 2010.
The attempt was made on the life of a top army officer Major General D S Pathania who, however, escaped unhurt as his cavalcade had passed from there. While Majeed was arrested after some days, Sarwar is still absconding.
For killing one civilian in the explosion, the judge awarded life imprisonment to Abdul Majeed and imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on him. In case of default in payment of fine, he shall undergo imprisonment for three months, he held.