New Delhi: The Karnataka High Court has recently observed that terrorist activities perpetrated by fanatics to achieve religious supremacy decrying the other religions pose a threat to integrity, unity and stability of the nation.
“Terrorism has no territorial bounds; though it has nothing to do with any particular religion, if terrorist activities are perpetrated by fanatics to achieve religious supremacy decrying the other religions and thereby pose a threat to integrity, unity and stability of the nation, people of such mind set have to blame themselves if they get into trouble….”, the High Court’s division bench has held.
A bench of Justice SH Kumar and JM Khazi has made these observations while dismissing a petition filed by one Roshan A., S/o Abdul Rafeeq, who allegedly killed one Harsha, a cow protection activist and a member of Bajrang Dal.
Irked by the activities of the deceased, the accused had allegedly hatched a conspiracy to kill him, as that one killing would terrorize the section of society. The accused approached the High Court seeking to quash the sanction order issued by the Union of India under section 45 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
High Court held the petitioner-accused’s projection that entrustment of investigation to the NIA was to target members of minority community to be fallacious.
“The initial burden is on the prosecution to establish its case, and if the petitioner or any other accused of this case has the feeling that members of minority community are targeted even though scheduled offence is not committed, the prosecution witnesses can be discredited in the cross-examination. In other words, it is a matter of trial, therefore the argument based on this ground also fails…”, the court held.
The petitioner’s contention that in some other cases of murder similar to the incident in this case, investigation was not handed over to the NIA and therefore prosecuting the petitioner for stringent offences under UA(P)A was violative of equality before law, was also rejected.