The acquittal comes as more of an embarrassment for the police because their case suffered due to two of their officers contradicting each other during the trial.
While the Mumbai police held a press conference on Wednesday evening claiming success in cracking a sensational diamond theft from a bank, it faced major embarrassment, when the sessions court acquitted three accused who allegedly looted a bank in October 1999 to fund the hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in December 1999.
The acquittal comes as more of an embarrassment for the police because their case suffered due to two of their officers contradicting each other during the trial. The court acquitted Abdul Latif and Bhopal Mansingh Yusuf Khan, both sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in the hijack by a CBI court in Delhi in 2008. The court also acquitted a third accused Mushtaq Ahmed.
The prosecution said, on October 6, 1999, the three robbed Maharashtra State Co-operative bank in Borivli and fled with Rs7.35 lakh. They were arrested on December 30, 1999 and the police claimed to have recovered around Rs2 lakh from them. The police also said that they recovered AK-56 rifles, hand grenades and rocket launchers from their house in Jogeshwari.
“Apart from the bank officials and customers, the 13 witnesses examined in the court included the then senior inspector of Borivli police station Prafful Joshi and investigating officer Arjun Bagdi. However, there statements were not in sync and court accepted the defence’s argument that either one of them was lying. Justice Vishnu Sahay cited a Bombay high court judgment which said that if it is difficult to decide which out of the two witnesses was lying, both the witnesses can be discarded. The case was dismissed and the accused acquitted,” said Abdul Wahab who represented Abdul Latif.
According to Wahab, while Joshi said that Bagdi had come for an hour during the search operation for the accused at Behrambagh, Bagdi denied having gone to the spot at all. Similarly, Joshi mentioned having handed over the weapons to Joshi as well as recording statement at Andheri unit. Bagdi said it was done at the Kandivli unit.
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