india

Updated: Nov 01, 2013 04:24 IST

Carrying and detonating a bomb is not a crime – as long as you have legal papers. Or so it appears, if one goes by the FIR filed by the GRP against Mohd Imtiaz Ansari.





Imtiaz was held minutes after the first bomb went off accidentally in a toilet at the Patna Junction on Sunday, leaving his colleague Mohd Tarique Ansari injured. But after catching a terrorist red-handed – a first in the country – GRP officers asked him if he carried documents for the bombs.

“I asked Imtiaz to furnish legal documents for carrying bombs, which he could not. When quizzed, Imtiaz admitted that after the blast, he had tried to flush the bombs down the toilet,” read the FIR lodged on the statement of GRP SHO Ram Pukar Singh.

When the cops caught Imtiaz, he was practically out of his mind with panic. “Clutching a bag, he was opening and closing the door of the toilet. I called the cops and they found bombs in the bag,” said a porter.

If that wasn’t enough, this crucial first FIR left a loophole that might make it difficult to pin Imtiaz down in court, said Sanjay Kumar, a lawyer at the Patna HC.

Though it is understood that the man was carrying bombs, it is nowhere mentioned in the FIR. There is no detail either about the number of bombs recovered, or description.

There is no mention of a slip of paper recovered from him that contained 7 phone numbers, which led to raids and arrests across Jharkhand and Bihar.

For the record, each of the two terrorists caught was carrying a bag containing three bombs. After the first bomb accidentally detonated, Imtiaz tried to flush his own bag.

But that plan backfired. When he was caught, he had Tariq’s bag in his hand, which still contained two bombs, said a police officer.

All this is part of the seizure list, but has little legal value.