Karnataka High Court dismisses petition filed by accused in 2012 terror plot case

Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has dismissed the petition filed by Dr Sabeel Ahmed alias Motu Doctor, an accused in the 2012 terror plot case. He is facing charges of terror activities in a case registered at the Basaveshwara Nagar police station in Bengaluru.  

The case pertains to conspiracy hatched by the members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (Le-T). The National Investigation Agency (NIA) in its chargesheet stated that the accused had procured illegal arms and ammunition for targeted killings of important personalities of Hindu community in Bengaluru, Hubballi in Karnataka, Nanded in Maharashtra and in Hyderabad in Telangana.

The case was registered in August 2012 and transferred to the NIA in November 2012. The NIA had filed the chargesheet against other accused persons and Sabeel Ahmed was detained on his deportation from Saudi Arabia in 2020. The NIA pressed charges against him in a supplementary chargesheet filed in 2021.

Sabeel had moved an application before the special court seeking discharge from the case. It was contended that he had been acquitted by a Delhi court in connection with a case based on identical allegations and same witnesses. The Delhi police special cell case in 2017 was for an alleged terror funding case. On August 19, 2023, the special court rejected his application seeking discharge and Sabeel moved the high court.

The special public prosecutor for NIA submitted that the allegations in both the cases are different. While in the Delhi case the allegation was raising funds for and conspiracy to a terrorist act, in the Bengaluru case it is taking part in terror activities of targeted killings. He was actively participating in several meetings connected to the commission of the crime,” the prosecution said.

A division bench comprising Justice Sreenivas Harish Kumar and Justice JM Khazi noted that the offences with charges against the petitioner before the Delhi court were not same as invoked against him in the Bengaluru case.

“May be the acts have similarities, but they are not the same. Some of the witnesses to both the trials may be the same, again it is not a ground for invoking section 300 of CrPC. The special court in its order has very well delineated the differences in allegations made in both the cases. The two cases are factually different and separate. There is no error in the impugned order,” the bench said.

A resident of Banashankari in Bengaluru, Sabeel Ahmed is the younger brother of Kafeel Ahmed, who carried out a suicide bomb attack at Glasgow airport in June 2007. No one died in the incident except Kafeel who succumbed due to severe burns weeks later.