2 men freed after 20 years, Special Cell case in disgrace

Twenty years of legal proceedings later, the Delhi High Court has not just refused to overturn their acquittal, it has allowed to stand a judicial record that questions whether any of it actually happened

It began with a dramatic claim: two men caught at a busy North Delhi intersection, arms and explosives in hand, terror links established, the city safer for the Special Cell’s vigilance. That was February 2006.

Twenty years of legal proceedings later, the Delhi High Court has not just refused to overturn their acquittal, it has allowed to stand a judicial record that questions whether any of it actually happened. According to the court record, both men had claimed they were working as informers for the Special Cell and the Intelligence Bureau since 2000. They alleged that they were falsely implicated after refusing to go undercover at a militant camp in Jammu.

The High Court found no reason to disagree with the trial court’s decision to let them go free. Its reasoning, laid out across the judgment, amounts to a forensic dismantling of the prosecution’s case.

A Division Bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh and Justice Madhu Jain dismissed Delhi Police’s appeal against the acquittal of Moarif Qamar and Irshad Ali, two men who had been booked under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Arms Act, and the Explosive Substances Act after the Special Cell claimed to have arrested them at Mukarba Chowk with weapons, ammunition, and explosives, and alleged links to the militant outfit Al-Badr.

The arrests were claimed at Mukarba Chowk, a location the court noted sits near an IGL station, a police booth, and a bus depot. It is not an empty back lane. Yet the prosecution could produce no independent public witness to the alleged recovery of arms and explosives at this busy public spot.

The bus in which the accused were allegedly travelling had a driver and a conductor. Neither was examined. Bus tickets reportedly recovered from one of the accused were never properly verified. No fingerprints were lifted from the seized weapons or explosives. The court found missing links at every critical juncture of the investigation. “With no unimpeachable evidence available on record, the acquittal does not warrant interference,” the High Court said.

The most damaging element of the judgment, however, is not what the court found on its own. It is what the court found in a CBI closure report submitted in 2008, after an independent probe was ordered into the matter. The CBI concluded that the arrests shown by the Special Cell did not inspire confidence.

Its investigators alleged that Qamar and Ali had actually been picked up weeks before their formal date of arrest and held in illegal detention.

The agency found that the alleged recovery of arms and explosives appeared to be fabricated. It found no credible evidence linking the two men to Al-Badr.

The prosecution, the High Court noted, failed to effectively rebut any of this during the trial. Call data records and other material discussed by the CBI were never convincingly challenged. The CBI report was never answered. It simply sat in the record, uncontroverted, while the prosecution pressed on with a case built on evidence the court found insufficient at every stage.

The bench underlined a principle that carries weight beyond this specific case. Appellate courts, it said, should interfere with acquittals only when the trial court’s findings are perverse or wholly unsustainable. Here, it held, the trial court’s view was both possible and plausible. Acquittal strengthens the presumption of innocence, the court noted, and criminal cases must be decided strictly on unimpeachable evidence, not suspicion.