Abu Jundal, 11 others found guilty in Aurangabad arms haul case

Mumbai: The special Maharashtra Control of organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court in Mumbai on Thursday found 26/11 terror attacks key plotter Abu Jundal and 11 others guilty in the 2006 Aurangabad arms haul case. The MCOCA court said that it was a conspiracy after the 2002 Gujarat riots to eliminate the then Gujarat Chief minister Narendra Modi and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) president Praveen Togadia. “Someone calling a Government corrupt or unfit cannot be slapped with defamation prosecution,” the court observed during the hearing. The court also said this was a larger conspiracy to strike terror and they (accused) were calling it ‘jihad’. On May 8, 2006, a Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) team chased a Tata Sumo and an Indica car on Chandwad-Manmad highway near Aurangabad and arrested three terror suspects and seized 30 kilogram of RDX, AK-47 assault rifles and 3,200 bullets. Jundal, who hails from Beed district of Maharashtra, drove to Malegaon and a few days later he escaped to Bangladesh from where he fled to Pakistan, according to the state police. Earlier, the trial had been stayed by the Supreme Court after one of the accused had challenged the constitutional validity of certain provisions in the MCOCA invoked on the accused. The stay was lifted in 2009.