A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Patna on Friday, 1 June, sentenced all five accused in the Bodh Gaya serial bomb blasts case of 7 July, 2013, to life in prison.
The convicted persons are Umer Siddiqui, 39, Azaharuddin Qureshi, 25, Imtiyaz Ansari alias Alam, 35, Haider Ali alias Black Beauty, 30, and Mujibullah Ansari, 28.
The five, who were also involved in the Gandhi Maidan serial blasts during the Hunkar Rally of then prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, were convicted by the court last Friday, 25 May.
The NIA said terrorist organisation SIMI was behind the blasts. Quoting the investigative agency, News18 said the organisation had allegedly conspired to target the Buddhist site in order to avenge the killing of Rohingya Muslims by the Myanmar Army.
The NIA called Haider Ali the mastermind behind the attack, and said that he had been trained by SIMI member Umar Siddiqui in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
The report says that Ali had received the explosives from Raipur and then come back to Bodh Gaya, where he had carried out a couple of recces of the temple before the day of the attack.
Umar Siddiqui and Azharuddin Quraishi are natives of Chhattisgarh, while the rest of the accused are from Jharkhand.
The Times of India reported that around 90 people were cross-checked as witnesses in the case.
Special NIA Judge Manoj Kumar Sinha had posted the matter after hearing arguments from the prosecution, which pressed for severe punishment to the convicts, and counter- arguments from the defence side.
Special Public Prosecutor Lalan Kumar Sinha had said that all five convicts should be awarded imprisonment for life.
He argued that the blasts triggered at a world-renowned pilgrim spot could have caused "heavy casualties, leading to national and international ramifications.”
No deaths were recorded in the blasts, though some people, including Buddhist monks, had sustained injuries in the series of explosions that had rocked Bodh Gaya on 7 July, 2013.
Defence counsel Surya Prakash Singh, however, repudiated the prosecution's arguments, saying the explosions "were nothing more than a protest against atrocities on Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar by the Buddhist majority.”
In addition to the five convicts, another accused was held guilty in the case by a juvenile court in October last year and sent to remand home for three years.
All the six are also facing trial along with others in the Patna blasts case of 2013.
(With inputs from PTI and The Times of India)
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