Bengaluru: One of the 14 accused in the blasts at Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium ahead of a cricket match in 2010 pleaded guilty before a magisterial court and was sentenced to six years’ simple imprisonment and a year’s rigorous imprisonment on Friday.
The civil court where the trial has been on for the last few years handed out the sentence to Fasih Mahmood (accused number 14), an engineering graduate, while also imposing a fine of Rs 1.2 lakh on him. Mahmood, an alleged Indian Mujahideen (IM) member, was accused of having introduced another key accused to the founder of the terror group, Yasin Bhatkal (accused number 1).
Three others had already pleaded guilty in 2018, and were given a seven-year sentence. Trial for others will continue.
Mahmood was detained in Saudi Arabia in May 2012. He was deported and was arrested at Delhi airport five months later.
Fifteen people, including security personnel, were injured in two blasts that were set off by timer devices at the packed cricket stadium on April 17, 2010 with an Indian Premier League (IPL) game scheduled. A third bomb was also found and defused by the police. The blasts happened about an hour before the match between Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Mumbai Indians (MI) was to take place.
Four of the 14 were accused of direct involvement in planting bombs in 2010. The others were accused of indirect involvement, such as harbouring criminals or conspiring to facilitate the crime in other ways. Barring the four who have pleaded guilty until now, trial against the others will continue.
While Yasin himself is on death row in Delhi’s Tihar Jail after being convicted by a National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in 2016, another accused in the case Mohammad Qateel Siddiqui was lynched in a Pune prison by fellow inmates in 2012.
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