Varanasi serial blasts 2006: Waliullah Khan gets death penalty, life imprisonment in two separate cases

Sixteen years after serial bomb blasts that had rocked the holy city of Varanasi, the Ghaziabad court on Monday provided death penalty and life imprisonment to the blast accused Waliullah Khan in two separate cases.

Khan has been awarded death sentence in blasts at Sankatmochan temple and Varanasi cantonment railway station in 2006.

Talking to the reporters, the district government counsel Rajesh Sharma said that the District Sessions Judge Jitendra Kumar Sinha convicted Waliullah in two cases which were lodged under the Explosives Act and various other sections including murder, attempt to murder and mutilation of the Indian Penal Code.

The accused has acquitted in one case due to inadequate evidence, Sharma said.

The blasts in Sankatmochan temple and Varanasi cantonment railway station on March 7, 2006 had claimed at least 20 lives and left over 100 injured.

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On March 7, 2006, the first bomb at 6.15 pm inside the Sankat Mochak temple while an another bomb exploded after 15 minutes at Varanasi cantonment railway station area. The third was bomb found in Godaulia did not explode.

The high-profile case was transferred to the Ghaziabad district court after the lawyers in Varanasi had refused to plead the case.

So far in these three case, 21 witnesses have been produced in the court.

In April 2006, the special task force, which was investigating the blasts, had found that Waliullah Khan, a resident of Foolpur, is the mastermind of blasts and is linked to a Bangladesh terrorist outfit Harkat-ul-jehad Al Islami. He had arrested by the police from Lucknow.

However, Zakaria, Musifiz and Wazir, the other accused in this case, could not be traced till date while one of the accused Zubair was killed in an encounter in Kashmir.

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