A 28 year old high-profile cricket pitch digging case that had sown the seeds for armed rebellion in Jammu and Kashmir came to close after the local court acquitted all the 12 accused including some of the former militant commanders for lack of evidence.
Police had arrested 12 people after the cricket pitch was dug-up during India -West Indies one day international match on October 13 1983 at Sher-e-Kashmir cricket stadium here. Scores of people had swarmed into the ground during the lunch break and damaged the pitch.
This was the first international cricket match to be played in Kashmir which had angered the people with separatist ideology claiming that J&K was a "disputed" territory.Some of the accused later became the commanders when militancy started in 1989.
District and sessions judge Srinagar Kaneez Fatima on Monday finally delivered the judgment and acquitted all the accused for lack of evidence and witnesses.
“The case was registered in 1983 but the charges were framed in 1989. Yesterday the court acquitted all the accused for want of evidence”, said Mir Urfi, one of the defence counsels.
The case saw many twists and turns since its inception.Dozens of judges heard the case during their tenure in Srinagar. The case saw some of the noted lawyers including Ghulam Nabi Hagroo, Jaleel Ahmad Andrabi, and Ghulam Qadir Sailani representing the defendants.
Andrabi was killed after being abducted by the army led by Major Avtar Singh who has fled to US. Sailani too was shot dead by unknown gunmen. Hagroo died of illness a few years ago.
Some of the accused became commanders during militancy and were jailed on different charges when turmoil started after 1990. Former Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) commander Showkat Ahmad Bakshi, who was one of the accused in the pitch-digging case, said he was not presented before the court in this case during his 12 years incarceration.
“I was arrested in 1990 and remained in jail for 12 years. And in all these I was not presented before the court. So the case stretched on and finally all of us were acquitted because there was no witness or evidence”, said Bakshi.
The JKLF leader claimed that they were fasly implicated in the case. “We were in the stadium protesting and raising slogans. But police randomly arrested people including a man who was supporting Indian cricket team”, he said.
Bakshi said he was relieved that the case has finally come to the close. “I feel relieved because the case was a set-up”, he said.
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