Hand-chopping: Verdict on April 6

The NIA Court in Kochi will pronounce on April 6 the verdict in the sensational case pertaining to the Islamist attack on Prof TJ Joseph, now retired, in which his right hand was chopped off. The trial in the case was completed in the court on Wednesday.

There are a total of 33 accused in the case but MK Nasser, prime accused and the man who had planned the attack on the professor, is still absconding. The National Investigation Agency, which had probed the incident, had submitted the chargesheet in the NIA court earlier.

A group of assailants belonging allegedly to the SDPI, the political arm of the Popular Front of India, had attacked Joseph, then a Malayalam professor, at the Church-managed Newman’s College in Thodupuzha, Idukki when he was returning from a local church in Muvattupuzha after Sunday Mass with his mother and sister in a car on the morning of July 4, 2010.

The seven-man group had carried out the attack after creating a terror atmosphere by blasting country bombs. They chopped the right hand of the professor and threw it into a vacant plot nearby. The Islamists attacked the professor allegedly for blaspheming Prophet Muhammad in a question paper he had prepared for his students.

The NIA, which had taken over the probe as the incident had extremist shade, said in the chargesheet that the act of the accused was deliberate and of extremist nature. The accused were charged with attempt to murder, unlawful assembly, conspiracy and infliction of injury and also under the Arms and Explosives Acts.

The incident was first investigated by the Kerala Police and then the probe was taken over by its Internal Security Investigation Team. During the trial, the NIA Court examined 301 witnesses. The probe agency had produced in the court 244 documents and 29 exhibits. The brutal attack on Joseph had led to a tough crackdown by the police on the Popular Front across the State.

The Catholic Church management of the college had suspended Joseph from service on September 1, 2010 for preparing the question paper which had allegedly contained blasphemy. The management refused to reinstate him even after the Judiciary concluded that there was nothing blasphemous in the test paper.

Unable to bear the stress his unemployment caused in the family and convinced somehow that Joseph would not be reinstated before the date of his formal retirement, his wife Salomi committed suicide on March 19, 2014.