Madrasa teacher who spent 10 years in jail for terror acquitted by Odisha judge

A37-year-old madrasah instructor who has been in slammer below the anti-terror jurisprudence since 2015 was acquitted by a Cuttack court on Tuesday, holding that the prosecution had “failed miserably” to prove any of its charges despite examining 46 witnesses and relying on 55 documents.Cuttack district and sessions judge Manas Ranjan Barik acquitted Mohammad Abdur Raheman Alli Khan, also known as Maulana Mansoor, of all charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Section 124-A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code. Raheman was accused on recruiting youth for Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and charged with terrorism, terror funding and recruiting youth for a terror group.The judge trashed the prosecution case, blaming the police for only offering “bald statements” about Raheman’s alleged membership of AQIS, his alleged connections to Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, and his purported travel to Pakistan without producing a single document to support any of it.“Not a single scrap of paper has been produced in support of his testimony regarding the travel of the accused to Pakistan,” the court said. Raheman’s passport showed no evidence of any such travel.On the money trail, the court found the investigating officer had not examined a single depositor to Raheman’s personal bank accounts or to the Al-Haramain Trust account, could not say for what purpose the deposits had been made, and had not traced a single transfer from the trust account to any organisation or individual for any illegal purpose.An audio CD, allegedly containing a provocative speech by Raheman retrieved and transcribed with the help of an Urdu teacher from Ravenshaw Collegiate School also showed nothing related to terrorism. The court found that the speech, on careful reading of its Odia and Urdu transcripts, contained religious content urging Muslims to follow their faith and not fear opposition.Seventeen of the 46 prosecution witnesses turned hostile, with many saying Raheman only imparted Islamic teachings and he had never heard him speak against any religion.Applying the standard laid down in Asif Iqbal Tanha vs State of NCT of Delhi by the Delhi high court, the court reiterated that the definition of “terrorist act” under UAPA Section 15, though wide, “cannot be permitted to be casually applied to criminal acts or omissions that fall squarely within the definition of conventional offences.”