Kolkata: Calcutta High Court on Friday granted bail to an accused in the Khagragarh blast case who had been in judicial custody for eight years. There were allegations that the person was a member of banned organisation Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).
The blast occurred at a house at Burdwan's Khagragarh on Oct 2, 2014, leaving two terrorists dead and a third injured. Police seized 55 IEDs, RDX, wristwatch dials and SIM cards from the spot.
A division bench of justices Joymalya Bagchi and Gaurang Kanth granted bail to Abdul Kalim alias Azad with a direction that the accused shall not leave Kolkata and South 24 Parganas and report to the police station once a week. The bench also directed the petitioner to provide his address and cellphone numbers to the police station.
The bench, while taking note that the allegation of Kalim being a member of a banned outfit was quite serious, held that no covert act on his part was established and his complicity in the crime was claimed through uncorroborated statements of the co-accused.
The bench noted that Kalim was arrested on Oct 13, 2016, and later shown arrested in an NIA case in 2019. He was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment in the first case while the second case was yet to reach the conviction stage.
Justice Bagchi observed that the accused had been in jail for eight years and, therefore, was entitled to concurrent running even if he was convicted in the second case.
The bench granted bail on the grounds that nobody knew when the trial in the second case would conclude, and Kalim's continued custody as an undertrial after eight years of imprisonment would infract the petitioner's right to a speedy trial under Article 21 of the Constitution.
STF claimed Kalim was an important catch because he was arrested alongside Anowar Hossein Faruk, the Bengal JMB chief and a native of Bangladesh's Jamalpur.
(With inputs from Dwaipayan Ghosh in Kolkata)