Kandhar hijacking: Special Court summons Farooq and Khurana as witnesses

PATIALA: The former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah and of Delhi Madan Lal Khurana along with official of the Pakistani consulate were Friday summoned by the special anti-hijacking court  here to appear before the court as defense witnesses in the Kandhar hijacking case on September 15. 

Inderjit Singh Walia special court judge has also issued summons to Kandhar aerodrome authority, Afghanistan, superintendent of Tihar Jail, inspector general of police of Jammu and Kashmir and commissioner of Delhi police.

Defense counsel for Yusuf Nepali and Dalip Kumar Bhujel, the prime accused of helping the hijackers of the India airline plane, H. V. Rai, had moved an application seeking summoning of these persons to the could to establish that the hijacking had been planned by the government of India. 

Rai said that the summons had been issued under section 233 of the Cr.P.C. that permitted summoning of any body anywhere in the world. Rai said he had sought production of the list of Pakistan's 20 most wanted persons living in India that was handed over by the Pakistani government to India during the reign of BJP led government. He said that the chief of Kandhar aerodrome authority had been summoned to prove that an Afghan plane had brought Indian's foreign minister Yashwant Sinha back to India.

He said that some statements issued by Farooq Abdullah and Madan Lal Khurana brought to light some very startling facts that could consolidate defense's case.
 
Rai said that the defence also wanted to verify the records of the Tihar jail from where the three terrorists Umar Sheikh, Mohammad Zargar and Mulana Masood Azhar had been let off to free the hostages. He said that the record could establish that no legal route had been followed by the union government to release the three prisoners.

He said that defence would also verify on whose orders the three terrorists had been shifted from the Jammu and Kashmir jail to the Tihar jail, for which the inspector general of the Jammu and Kashmir had also been summoned.

He said according to the Delhi police, one of the hijackers of the Indian airlines plane had been killed during the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. He said that the commission of the Delhi police had been summoned to verify these claims of the Delhi police.