Senior advocate Yug Chaudhry, who had argued against awarding death penalty to the accused, said, "The accused are pure as a ray of light and innocent as newly born child. The verdict is a miscarriage of justice, since the case was not even fit for conviction. The prosecution had no evidence against the accused at all."
Slamming the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court judgment awarding death penalty to five of the 12 convicts in the July 11, 2006 serial train blast case, the defence advocates said they will approach the higher court to file an appeal against the order.
Senior advocate Yug Chaudhry, who had argued against awarding death penalty to the accused, said, "The accused are pure as a ray of light and innocent as newly born child. The verdict is a miscarriage of justice, since the case was not even fit for conviction. The prosecution had no evidence against the accused at all."
Defence advocate Wahab Khan, appearing on the behalf of the accused, said the verdict was an injustice to the victims, their families and the deceased, as they were made to feel that the convicts were the actual perpetrators of the crime.
"When the accused were convicted, the defence had sought for leniency in awarding the sentence. But it appears the court did not give enough value to any of the evidence that the defence presented. We will definitely approach the Bombay High Court to challenge the order. Our fight for justice will continue," said Khan.
Another defence advocate, Shariff Sheikh, claimed, "They are innocent victims of the system. False evidence was cooked up against the accused, accompanied by confessions recorded after torture. The court has somewhere committed a mistake and has not made the effort to find the truth."
NGO says they will get best possible help
The Maharashtra-based NGO that has been providing legal aid to the accused said on Wednesday that they will approach the best counsels to argue the appeal in the case. The NGO members said that while they respect the judiciary, they will not step back and will challenge the order before the right appealing authority, ie the Bombay High Court.
Gulzar Azmi, secretary of the legal aid department of Jamait Ulama-e-Maharashtra, said, "During the trial stage, the NGO provided evidence in the form of Call Data Records (CDR), to prove that the accused were not present at the spot where the incident took place. The court, however, failed to appreciate our effort."
Azmi added that the case was very complex, and linked to several other issues. "Those who stood the trials repeatedly said that the accused had no role to play in the blast, but the court did not consider this aspect. So, we shall assemble all these aspects and put them before the Bombay High Court in the form of our appeal," he said.
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