Terrorist Waliullah Khan, convicted in the 2006 Varanasi serial blasts case, was on Monday sentenced to death and life imprisonment by a Ghaziabad court. He was found guilty in two cases on Saturday. His sentence came 16 years after blasts rocked Varanasi’s Sankat Mochan temple and the cantonment railway station, leaving at least 20 dead and over 100 injured.
District Sessions Judge Jitendra Kumar Sinha convicted Waliullah in two cases which were lodged under IPC sections of murder, attempt to murder, and mutilation and under the Explosives Act, district government counsel. The accused has acquitted in one case due to inadequate evidence, Rajesh Sharma told news agency PTI.
On 7 March 2006, the first blast took place at 6.15 pm inside the Sankat Mochak temple in the Lanka police station. After 15 minutes, a bomb exploded outside the first-class retiring room at Varanasi cantonment railway station. A cooker bomb was also found near the railings of a railway crossing in Dashashwamedh Police Station on the same day.
Lawyers in Varanasi had refused to plead the case. The Allahabad High Court had transferred the case to the Ghaziabad district court. In all three cases, 121 witnesses were produced before the court. Waliullah hailed from Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh.
In April 2006, the special task force, which was investigating the blasts, had claimed that was Waliullah Khan was linked to a terrorist outfit in Bangladesh Harkat-ul-jehad Al Islami and was the mastermind behind the blasts.
(with inputs from PTI)
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