Mumbai, March 19 A special NIA court here has refused to discharge Irfan Khan, the alleged main conspirator in the 2022 murder of Umesh Kolhe, a pharmacist based in Amravati, saying there is sufficient prima facie evidence against the accused to proceed with the trial.
The court said the murder was not the result of personal rivalry, but a "larger conspiracy" intended to instill fear among a section of the people of India.
Special NIA judge Chakor Bhaviskar, in an order passed last week, noted that the accused "was not angered by the singular act of the victim, but was harboring resentment towards an entire community".
Kolhe, who had shared social media posts supporting suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma over her controversial comments about the Prophet Mohammad, was killed in Amaravati, about 650 kilometers from here, in June 2022.
As many as 11 accused, including Khan, were arrested in the case under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for murder, as well as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Khan's defense was that the invocation of UAPA was an "afterthought and completely misused".
He claimed that the police, which had initially investigated, treated it as a murder case, but that when the "NIA (National Investigation Agency) took over the investigation, they fabricated and distorted the facts".
Khan contended that no terrorist organization was involved, and therefore, it did not fall under UAPA. He sought to be discharged from all charges, or at least from the UAPA charges.
However, the court, based on the evidence, held that "the case is not a simple murder under section 302 of the IPC", as vehemently argued by the defense.
None of the accused in the case had any personal rivalry with the victim, but they nevertheless hatched a criminal conspiracy to murder him, the court noted.
"The intention of the accused in this case was to instill fear in the minds of a particular section of people in India, and for that, they used lethal weapons to kill Kolhe. They did create fear," the court said.
The judge stated that the court had satisfied the elements of the definition of a "terrorist act" as required in section 15 of UAPA.
The court asserted that there were provocative speeches which "revealed that the accused intended to instill fear in particular sections of the people".
The court concluded that there was "more than sufficient evidence" to frame charges against the accused for all the alleged offenses.
Consequently, the accused does not deserve to be discharged from any of the charges, including those under UAPA, the NIA court ruled.
