Twin blasts verdict put off to Sept 4; kin of victims vent ire

​Hyderabad: Disappointing the victims once again, the Metropolitan Session Judges court, Nampally on Monday postponed the verdict in Gokul Chat and Lumbini Park twin bomb blasts case to September 4. The judgement order was yet to be readied in the case. All the five suspects Tarik Anjum, Mohammed Sadik Ishrar Shaik, Akbar Ismail Choudhary, Anique Shafik Syed and Farooq Tarkish were produced before the court through a video conference from Cherlapally Central Prison and examined. Due to security reasons, the suspects were produced through video conference.

Speaking to media on the court premises after the video conference, senior advocates MA Azeem and Shaik Saifullah Khan said that the verdict was postponed as the judgement order was yet to be readied. Investigation was conducted by four different agencies namely the Special Investigation Team (SIT), OCTOPUS, Counter Intelligence(CI) and later by the National Investigating Agency (NIA). Around 1,225 pages charge sheet was filed by the investigation agencies separately.

While the four suspects were involved in the twin blasts at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat, the fifth suspect, Tarik Anjum, was involved in the third IED case, which was defused by the police at Dilsukhnagar foot-over-bridge.

The investigative agencies suspected 11 persons in the case in which four persons were unidentified. The agencies filed charge sheet against seven suspects of the Indian Mujahideen (IM). They have arrested five suspects who are in Cherlapally jail now and two suspects (Riyaz Bhatkal and Iqbal Bhatkal) are still at large.

Meanwhile, a total of 44 innocent people were killed in the blasts on August 25 in 2007 while 65 people, including children, students and women suffered critical injuries. It took 11 years for the lawmakers to announce dates for verdict. However, they postponed the verdict to September 4, over which the victims and their families expressed their dissatisfaction and anger.

The victims and their family members who came to Nampally court to hear the verdict were disappointed heavily. They reacted to the media over the delay of the verdict.

J Narasimha Sharma, 35, a private teacher and a purohit who lives in Malakpet Municipal Colony, had lost his elder daughter Pratyusha, 20, in the bomb blast at Gokul Chat. With tears welling up in his eyes, he asked, “For how long do we have to wait to hear the punishment to the brutal killers? We have lost our children which is neither empathised by the lawmakers nor by the government. We doubt that even on September 4 the verdict would be out.”
B Anjaiah, a resident of New Shantinagar-2 Uppal, who had lost three of his family members said, “We have waited for 11 long years to hear the punishment, but the delay in announcing the verdict disappointed us. Nobody cares for our sentiments. We can wait, all we want is that culprits must be punished severely.”

R Chander Naik, 26, President, Terrorists Bomb Blasts Victims Association, lost his right eye in the blast. He expressed his dissatisfaction at the postponement of the verdict. He urged the Central and State governments to help the victims financially instead of spending crores of rupees on the nabbed terrorists in the name of trials and keeping them in jail by giving them all facilities. He questioned the Centre for not addressing victims problems and opined that the State government must issue special handicapped certificates to the blast victims so that they could get jobs.

With sorrow, he expressed that the terrorists had hurt them only once, but the Central government approach towards the victims was killing them daily. Syed Raheem, 67, a painter, lost his left eye and due to his age, he is unable to earn money for his sustenance. Stating that he had spent lakhs of rupees for his treatment in private eye hospitals, he questioned why the governments should provide food to the terrorists by putting them in jail for years together. He urged the Centre to hang the terrorists openly and immediately so that other terrorists fear to do such barbarous acts.

G Mohan Reddy, father or Sadashiva Reddy, 38, who was critically injured in the blast said that his son was still trying reach normalcy. Sadashiva Reddy suffered serious injuries to his eye, hands and legs and unable to walk since the incident. “Don’t humiliate the victims by putting off the judgement,” he said, stating that whatever amount was given to them by the State government was not sufficient to even meet their medical expenses.