Lucknow: The “Islamic State (IS)-inspired killers” of a retired Kanpur school teacher attacked him even though he had “no animosity with the accused nor did he make any objectionable statement against anyone’s religious community,” a National Investigation Agency (NIA) special court said Thursday, while awarding death sentence to the two convicted for the crime.
The 2016 murder, the court said, was carried out simply to prove their commitment to the Islamic State, after identifying the victim as a Hindu and met the criteria of being the “rarest of rare cases”, for which capital punishment is restricted in India.
On 4 September, the court of special judge Dinesh Kumar Mishra convicted Atif Muzaffar and Mohammed Faisal for murdering Ramesh Babu Shukla, a retired principal of Kanpur’s Swami Atmaprakash Brahmchari Junior High School on 24 October, 2016, while he was returning home on a bicycle. The accused had identified him as a Hindu by his kalawa, a sacred thread worn by Hindus, said the 24-page court order accessed by ThePrint.
“The brutal murder of Ramesh Babu was done as part of a terror activity which cannot be treated as a usual case,” the court added.
While the two accused were convicted on 4 September, the capital punishment was announced Thursday.
Citing a 2013 Supreme Court order in the Shankar Kishanrao Khade versus state of Maharashtra case, involving the rape and murder of a minor in 2006, the NIA court noted that the apex court had then said that according to the legal principle, in the case of a rarest of the rare case, a court “should not take any decision by being judge-centric but by being society-centric” and “whether the society will accept the convict being punished with a death sentence in a matter or not”.
According to a statement issued by the UP Police Thursday, Faisal and Muzaffar were also among seven men awarded death sentences by the NIA court this February in a terror conspiracy case registered in 2017, in the aftermath of the Bhopal-Ujjain train blast that year.
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Shukla’s murder and links to the train blast case
According to the court order, Shukla was shot dead by unidentified persons near Piwadi village in the Chakeri police station area of Kanpur, when he was returning home on a bicycle.
His son registered a First Information Report (FIR) soon after the incident, but while investigation into the case was ongoing, the Bhopal-Ujjain train blast — reportedly the first-ever strike by IS in India — took place on 7 March, 2017, after which the UP ATS launched a crackdown against members of the terror group.
Muzaffar and Faisal were among those arrested in the case.
Investigation in Shukla’s murder case was taken over by the NIA, after it emerged that the retired school teacher might have been killed by the accused in the train blast case. The NIA re-registered an FIR in the case in November 2017.
‘Threat for society’
While deciding the case of Shukla’s murder, the court noted that “…the murder of Ramesh Babu does not fall under the category of a usual murder because the murder was committed by identifying him as a non-Muslim/kaafir to prove their commitment to the terror outfit ISIS [also an acronym for the Islamic State]”.
It added: “The motive was to impose a Shariat arrangement based on the majoritarian Muslim view along with spreading terrorism by eradicating the non-Muslim or kaafir population. In such a situation, the society will specifically accept the death penalty for the act committed by the convicts.”
The court said the accused were of a criminal mentality who are “a threat for the society and the country”.
Quoting American fiction writer Lois McMaster Bujold, the court said that the “dead cannot cry out for justice and it is the duty of the living to do so for them”.
The court held the two guilty of crime under Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder), 34 (common intention), 120-b (criminal conspiracy), sections 16 (1) (a) (terrorist act resulting in death) and 18 (conspiracy or attempt to commit, or advocate/abets/advise the commission of, a terrorist act) of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, and sections 3/25 (possession of firearm without license) and 27 (violating rules by using firearms) of the Arms Act.
It also slapped a fine of Rs 11.70 lakh each on the convicts.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)