Supreme Court has asked Gujarat high court to hear afresh a PIL which blames two IPS officers and another cop for 1992 RDX landing.
The Supreme Court has asked the Gujarat high court to conduct a fresh hearing of the PIL application, seeking action against three police officers in connection with the landing of RDX in Porbandar in 1993.
Of the three policemen named in the PIL, two are IPS officers - Satish Verma and Atul Karwal - while the third is Sukhdevsinh Zala.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by chief justice of India KG Balakrishnan said that as the writ petition was dismissed as not maintainable, the high court should consider it afresh "on merits in accordance with the law".
The apex court further said that the parties be given the opportunity of being heard afresh.
"We make it clear that we are not expressing any opinion on merits regarding the contentions advanced by the petitioner," the Supreme Court said. "We direct that the High Court may decide the writ petition at an early date."
In 2005, Yatin Oza, the then president of Gujarat high court advocates' association, had filed a petition seeking action against the two IPS officers and Zala for not making timely arrest of Abdul Sattar Hamdani, alias Sattar Maulana. Hamdani is among the main accused in the RDX landing case.
The RDX had landed on the coast of Porbandar in 1993 at the behest of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI. The explosive was later used to carry out serial bomb blasts in Mumbai. Sattar, who had acted as the link between the ISI and local gangsters to bring in the RDX and weapons, was caught in 1997.
The state government had set up the Justice Dave enquiry commission which had given a clean chit to the above-mentioned police officers.
In his PIL petition, Oza has also sought the quashing of the conclusions of the commission that gave the police officers a clean chit. In 2007, a bench of the Gujarat high court had rejected the PIL and directed Oza to pay Rs25,000 as cost.
According to Oza, the arms and ammunition had come to India in five phases from 1993. Sattar Maulana was arrested in 1997 when the fifth consignment came.
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