The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the death sentence handed out by a lower court to one of the main accused in the 2002 terrorist attack on the American Centre in Kolkata which resulted in the death of 6 policemen.

On January 22, 2002, two motorcycle borne terrorists had indiscriminately fired an AK-47 killing the six policemen and injuring fourteen civilians. The prime accused in the attack were Aftab Ansari and Jamiluddin Nasir along with three others.

The lower court had awarded a death sentence to all the accused, and earlier this year, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court upheld the death sentence of Ansari and Nasir, but commuted the death sentence of the other three to 7 years of imprisonment.

A vacation bench comprising of Justices G.S. Singhvi and C.K. Prasad of the Supreme Court issued notice to the West Bengal government yesterday. The apex court also stayed the death sentence of Ansari. Earlier this month, a bench comprising the then Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan with Justices Deepak Varma and B.S. Chauhan had stayed the death sentence of Nasir. Counsels Nitya Ramakrishnan, Pia Singh and Manika Tripathy Pandey appeared for both Ansari and Nasir. The counsels had briefed Senior Counsel K.T.S. Tulsi to appear on Nasir’s behalf.

Serious charges were levied against the main accused including waging war against the country, conspiracy to murder, and murder. It is notable that Ansari was not among the people arrested at the beginning of the investigations relating to the case. Shortly after the attacks, two assailants who were injured in the police shootout in relation to this case had dropped the name of Ansari in their dying declaration. Ansari is reportedly said to have links to the terror outfit Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islam and was arrested in Dubai before being deported to India.

Terror trials in recent times are increasingly being conducted in a speedy manner. The division bench of the Calcutta High Court took only 77 days to uphold the death sentence of Nasir and Ansari, and the recently concluded 26/11 Mumbai terror attack trial which handed the death sentence to Ajmal Kasab was concluded in 271 days. In stark contrast, the 1993 Bombay blasts case took a whopping 14 years to come to its logical conclusion.