The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea of Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Mohammad Arif alias Ashfaq to review his death sentence in the 2000 Red Fort attack case, Live Law reported.
“We have accepted the prayers that electronic records must be placed in consideration,” a bench of Chief Justice Uday Umesh Lalit and Justice Bela M Trivedi. “His guilt is proved. We affirm the view taken by this court and reject the review petition.”
Two soldiers of the 7th Battalion of the Rajputana Rifles and a civilian guard were killed in indiscriminate firing at the Red Fort on December 22, 2000. Arif from Pakistan’s Abbottabad, who planned the attack, and 10 others have been convicted in the case.
The Delhi High Court had given the death sentence to Arif in 2007, Live Law reported. He had filed a review petition then, which was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2011.
“It was an attack on Mother India,” the court had said. “This is apart from the fact that as many as three persons had lost their lives. The conspirators had no place in India. Appellant was a foreign national and had entered India without any authorisation or even justification.”
However, in 2016, the Supreme Court decided to re-hear his plea after it was decided that that review petitions filed in death sentence cases must be heard in open court.
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