A court in Cuttack, Odisha, has acquitted Maulana Abdur Rahman of all charges in a famous 11-year-old terrorism related case. The court said that the prosecution could not present sufficient and credible evidence to prove the charges. The District and Sessions Court gave this decision on Tuesday. The court said in its order that the statements of the witnesses and the evidence presented were not strong enough to frame charges on their basis.
What were the allegations against Maulana Abdur Rehman?
Abdur Rehman was arrested in the year 2015. He was accused of having links with Al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent, i.e. AQIS, pushing youth towards radicalism and recruiting people for terrorist activities. Investigating agencies claimed that he ran a madrassa in Tangi area near Cuttack, where children from poor families of Jharkhand were kept. It was alleged that the children were kept there in bad conditions. He was also alleged to have traveled to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates twice in 2015. Apart from this, it was also claimed that the investigation revealed that he had visited Jammu and Kashmir several times.
Cases were registered by NIA as well as state police.
In this case, several agencies including the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Jamshedpur Police of Jharkhand and Cuttack Commissionerate Police had registered separate cases. Later the investigation of the case was handed over to Odisha Crime Branch. Odisha Crime Branch had also imposed sedition sections against him citing national security. However, the court said that the prosecution had not succeeded in proving these serious allegations.
The arrest took place on the night of 16 December 2015.
Abdur Rehman was arrested on the night of 16 December 2015 by a joint team of Delhi Police Special Cell and Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Commissionerate Police in a raid at his house near Cuttack. During that time the police had confiscated his passport, mobile phone, tablet and some documents. At the same time, Rehman’s family had declared all the allegations against him wrong from the beginning. Now after the court’s decision, this matter has once again come into discussion.