HC grants time to Abu Salem to file documents in support of plea alleging illegal detention

The Delhi High Court Tuesday granted time to extradited gangster Abu Salem serving life imprisonment for his role in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case to place on record judgement relied upon by him in support of his habeas corpus petition claiming that his detention was illegalA bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup Jairam Bhambhani said Salem counsel should place on record the electronic copy of the judgement on which he was relying upon to show that his habeas corpus petition was maintainableThe bench listed the matter for further hearing on March 14 and also allowed advocate S Hariharan representing Salem to file brief written submissionsA habeas corpus petition is filed seeking direction to produce a person who is missing or illegally detainedThe high court was hearing a plea by Salem seeking to declare his detention in India as illegal and that he be repatriated to Portugal in view of conventions governing the field and the treaty conditionsThe high court had earlier observed that a habeas corpus petition filed by Salem was not made out as his detention cannot be illegal on being convicted by a court of lawIt had said that once a court of law has put Salem on trial and held him guilty how he could say that the custody is illegalIt had referred to a Supreme Court judgement and said ldquoeven if initially your detention was bad in law after your conviction by a court of law your custody does not remain illegalrdquo Salemrsquos counsel has sought to set aside the detention saying the extradition was done on various assurances which have been violated and his custody becomes illegalHe said Salem has been convicted for additional charges which were not part of the treatyThe plea said Salem was extradited in 2002 and has been languishing in jail since then and there is no hope that the pending appeals will be decided anytime soonOn October 27 2021 the Supreme Court has refused to grant bail to Salem in the murder caseOn February 25 2015 the special TADA court had awarded Salem life imprisonment for murdering Mumbaibased builder Pradeep Jain in 1995 along with his driver Mehndi HassanThe sentence of another accused in the case Virendra Jhamb was set off against the period of detention undergone by him in prison during the various stages of investigationAccording to police on March 7 1995 Jain was shot dead by assailants outside his Juhu bungalow after he allegedly refused to part with his huge property to SalemWhile one other accused Naeem Khan had turned approver another accused Riyaz Siddiqui who had also become approver later turned hostile in the court The trial of Siddiqui was later separatedThe court in January 2014 had dropped some charges against Salem in the case on the request of prosecution which said that some changes need to be withdrawn to maintain cordial relations between two sovereign countries India and PortugalSalem also a convict in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts was extradited from Portugal on November 11 2005 after a prolonged legal battleThe Supreme Court of Portugal in 2012 had dismissed an appeal of the CBI which had challenged the termination of his extraditionIn June 2012 Salem was shot at in Taloja Central Jail in Navi Mumbai allegedly by gangster Devendra Jagtap alias JD an accused in the murder case of advocate Shahid Azmi who had represented a 2611 Mumbai attack accusedIn June 2017 Salem was convicted and later awarded a life sentence for his role in the 1993 serial blast case in MumbaiSalem was found guilty of transporting weapons from Gujarat to Mumbai ahead of the blastsOn March 12 1993 the countrys commercial capital had witnessed an unprecedented attack with a series of 12 bomb explosions that took place one after another in about two hoursThe dastardly attacks had left 257 dead 713 persons seriously injured and destroyed properties worth croresIn 2020 a Portugal court dismissed a plea of Salem claiming that the Indian government had violated the condition of his extraditionThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever