A Patna court on Monday sentenced four people to death for their involvement in serial blasts in the city in October 2013, the Hindustan Times reported.
Special National Investigation Agency judge Gurvinder Singh Malhotra sentenced five other convicts to jail terms ranging from seven years to life imprisonment.
Six people were killed and 90 were wounded in seven blasts that took place at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan on October 27, 2013. The blasts took place at a rally that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was slated to address. Modi was then the Gujarat chief minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate.
Judge Malhotra had convicted the nine persons in the case on October 27. The court had acquitted one person for lack of evidence.
The convicts who have been awarded the death sentence are Haider Ali, Noman Ansari, Mohammed Mujibullah Ansari and Imtiyaz Alam, PTI reported. The court sentenced two others – Umar Siddiqui and Azharuddin Qureshi – to life imprisonment.
Two other convicts, Ahmed Husain and Mohd Firoz Aslam, have been awarded ten years’ rigorous imprisonment, while another convict, Iftikhar Alam, has been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.
Five of the convicts – Haider Ali, Mohd Mujibullah Ansari, Imtiyaz Alam, Umar Siddiqui and Azharuddin Ansari – are already serving life imprisonment in a separate case. A court in Patna had held them guilty of involvement in serial blasts at Bodh Gaya in July 2013.
Four bombs went off at the Mahabodhi temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site, while six exploded within a kilometre of the temple on July 7, 2013. Five people were injured in the blasts.
Special public prosecutor Lalan Kumar Sinha said that all the nine persons have been convicted under legal provisions relating to criminal conspiracy, murder, waging war against the Government of India, using explosives, the Railways Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
The National Investigation Agency cited statements of witnesses and electronic evidence in support of its case, according to PTI. According to the agency, the convicts hatched the conspiracy in Chhattisgarh’s capital city Raipur and prepared the explosives in Jharkhand’s Ranchi.
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