Terrorist stumps lawyers

PANAJI: The trial of Tariq Ahmed Battlo, who will go down in Goa's history as its first terrorist, since his arrest in March after being found with RDX is not without its dramatic moments.

The fast track court judge Narayan Amonkar on Friday passed an order transferring the Battlo case back to the sessions court after the Public Prosecutor Krishna Sanzgiri pointed out in the court that Amonkar, being an assistant sessions judge does not have the jurisdiction to try the case. Battlo is charged under Section 4 and 5 of the Explosives Substances Act which carries a punishment of more than 10 years. Amonkar agreed that the fast track court's powers were confined to cases where the punishment is limited to ten years and posted the case for further trial in the sessions court on July 12.

This is not the first controversy to hit the Battlo case wherein the alleged terrorist is playing his own lawyer. Battlo is a graduate who has done a course in radiology and computers before joining the Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen, an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, in Muzaffarabad. He came to Goa on and off over the last one year and had even rented a flat in Margao where residents knew him as an ever-smiling, genial neighbour.

Battlo had the prosecution in the fast track court stumped earlier this week when he picked holes in the police charge that he was arrested as he got off a train in Margao police station on March 10. "The Chief Minister(Pratasing Rane)'s March 8 statement made in connection with Curchorem riots(the first Hindu-Muslim riots in Goa) proves that I was already arrested(Rane had told the press on March 8 that the police had nabbed a Kashmiri terrorist). Where is the question of me alighting at the railway station on March 10 with RDX, grenandes and detonators ," Battlo argued before Amonkar. Battlo's contention is that he was arrested on March 3.