By PTI
BHOPAL: Safdar Nagori, one of the 38 convicts sentenced to death in the 2008 Ahmedabad serial bomb blasts case by a Gujarat court on Friday, appeared remorseless after the sentencing for a terror act that killed 56 people, and was heard saying the Constitution does not mean anything to him.
Nagori (54), a native of Madhya Pradesh who was associated with the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), was a key conspirator of the blasts, according to the prosecution.
He is currently lodged in the Bhopal Central Jail, from where he took part in sentencing proceedings in the Ahmedabad special court via video conferencing.
“The Constitution does not count for me. For me, the decisions of the Koran are supreme,” Bhopal Central Jail Superintendent Dinesh Nargawe quoted Nagori as saying soon after he was sentenced to death.
The other convicts in the case who are lodged with him in the Bhopal jail are Qumaruddin Nagori, Shivli, Shaduli, Amil Parvez, Hafiz and Ansab.
All his accomplices have been sentenced to death except Ansab, who has been handed down life imprisonment till death.
Three other accused lodged in the Bhopal Central Jail – Ahmed Beg, Yasin and Kamran – have been acquitted in the case.
“All the ten were brought to the Bhopal jail from Ahmedabad in 2017,” Nargawe told PTI, adding they are aged between 35 and 50 years barring Safdar Nagori (54).
Nagori was accused of collecting funds for acquiring explosives and for other illegal activities of SIMI related to the Ahmedabad blasts.
He hails from Mahidpur in Ujjain district and had been the general secretary of the banned terror outfit.
His father was an assistant sub-inspector in the crime branch of the Madhya Pradesh police, sources said.
Nagori is facing charges in nearly 100 criminal cases.
His first brush with the law was in 1997 when a criminal case was registered against him at the Mahakal police station in Ujjain, they added.
He was declared an absconder in the case in December 2000, they said, without providing details of the matter.
Nagori was arrested from a flat in Indore on March 26, 2008, and he had been in different jails since then.
Earlier in the day, the special court in Ahmedabad sentenced 38 convicts to death and said the 11 others found guility in the blasts case will remain in jail till death.
This is for the first time that so many convicts have been handed down the death sentence by any court at one go.
In January 1998, a TADA court in Tamil Nadu had sentenced to death all the 26 convicts in the case of assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.
The pronouncement of the quantum of punishment by judge A R Patel came nearly 14 years after the deadly blasts.
The court had convicted 49 persons and acquitted 28 others in the case on February 8.
As many as 21 explosions had ripped through Ahmedabad city on July 26, 2008, within a span of 70 minutes, killing 56 and injuring over 200.
In the over 7,000-page judgement, the court termed the case as the rarest of rare and ordered that 38 convicts in the case be hanged till death, while 11 others were awarded life imprisonment till death, public prosecutor Amit Patel told reporters in Ahmedabad.
These 38 persons were convicted under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 302 (murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) and provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Eleven others were held guilty for criminal conspiracy and under various sections of the UAPA, he said.
The court imposed a fine of Rs 2.85 lakh on 48 convicts and of Rs 2.88 lakh on the other one.
It also awarded compensation of Rs 1 lakh to the kin of those who died in the blasts, Rs 50,000 to those who were seriously injured and Rs 25,000 to those who received minor injuries.
All the convicts were present for the hearing via video-conference from eight different jails – Sabarmati central jail in Ahmedabad, Tihar in Delhi, prisons in Bhopal, Gaya, Bengaluru, Kerala and Mumbai.
