The Special NIA Court in Kochi on Thursday convicted 13 Islamic fundamentalists in the sensational case related to chopping off the right hand of college Professor TJ Joseph in July, 2010 for allegedly blaspheming Prophet Muhammad in a question paper prepared by him. The court acquitted 18 accused for want of evidence. Quantum of punishment for the convicted may be pronounced on May 5. There were a total of 37 accused in the case.
The convicted Islamists included five of the seven people who carried out the attack on Prof Joseph as also those who helped them and took part in the conspiracy. Five of the accused, including the man who chopped off the professor’s hand and chief conspirator MK Nasser, are still absconding. The court upheld NIA’s decision to slap provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) on ten of the 13 convicted accused. The court will pronounce the verdict in the case of one of the accused later. Apart from the provisions of the UAPA, the accused were also charged under the Explosives Act and for launching criminal conspiracy, voluntarily causing injuries using lethal weapons and criminal intimidation.
The charge of attempt to murder had been proved in the case of five of the seven accused who had carried out the attack on the professor. Islamists belonging to the radical Islamic outfit, Popular Front of India (PFI), and its political wing Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) had attacked Prof Joseph on the morning of July 4, 2010 for allegedly blaspheming Prophet Muhammad in a test paper he had set for his students at the Catholic Church-managed Newman’s College at Thodupuzha in Kerala’s Idukki district.
The Islamists had attacked Prof Joseph after hurling bombs when he was returning home with his mother Elikutty and sister Mary Stella after attending Sunday Mass at a church near his house in Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam district. The assailants chopped off his right hand with an axe and threw it into a vacant plot.
Reacting to the verdict, Prof Joseph said, “The verdict has no impact on me because I had pardoned my assailants in the court of my conscience long back… I am the victim. The authorities, who had pointed me out to the assailants by registering a case against me for non-existent blasphemy, are also accused in this case as far as I am concerned.”
“I was also a witness in the case and I believe I have fulfilled my legal obligations in this regard,” he added. The NIA had taken over the investigation into the incident, which was first probed by the local police and then the Crime Branch of the Kerala Police, considering its extremist nature. Pronouncing the verdict, the Special NIA Court judge P Sasidharan observed that the accused had acted with extremist tendency. They had also tried to create hatred in the society, he said.
There were a total of 54 accused in the case when the local police and the Crime Branch were investigating the incident. The NIA later exempted 18 from the list. The counsel for the accused said that they would appeal against the verdict while it was not certain whether the NIA would go for appeal in the context of the acquittal of so many accused.
Joseph said he had no complaints against the assailants but he was pained by the callousness showed to him by the authorities. The Catholic Church management of the college had expelled him from service two months after the attack on him accusing him of disrupting communal harmony through blasphemy in the test paper, a charge rejected by the court.
The Catholic management of the college had reinstated him in service only on March 28, 2014, just three days before his retirement. But his wife Salomi, unable to bear the pain, strain and penury his forced unemployment had caused, committed suicide eight days before that. Prof Joseph, the father of two, is yet to receive his retirement benefits.