Rampur court convicts five of 2008 CRPF camp attack, sentencing today

Police had booked Gulab Khan and Kausar for allegedly hiding the weapons used at their residences before the attack.

“Additional District and Session Judge Sanjay Kumar today held five accused identified, as Imran Shahzad, Farooq, Shareef, Jung Bahadur and Sabauddin guilty in the CRPF camp attack case. The court acquitted Gulab Khan and Mohammad Kausar for want of evidences,” district government counsel Dalvinder Singh said.

The same court, in another case, convicted Mumbai native Faheem Ansari, who was arrested along Shareef. Police had said they recovered two hand grenades, a pistol, a fake driving licence, a Pakistani passport and nine hand-drawn maps of Mumbai from Ansari’s possession. One of the maps was then claimed to have carried sketches of the routes in Mumbai used by militants in the November 26, 2008 attack.

Singh said Faheem Ansari was not accused in the CRPF camp attack case and has been convicted in a separate case.

The court will pronounce the quantum of sentence in both cases on Saturday.

According to the prosecution, militants entered the CRPF camp in Rampur in the early hours of January 1, 2008, firing indiscriminately and killing seven CRPF men on the campus and a rickshaw-puller outside. During the course of investigation, the UP Special Task Force arrested Shareef, Jung Bahadur, Kausar, Gulab Khan and Sabauddin, along with Imran of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Mohammad Farooq of Pakistan’s Punjab.

Faheem and Sabauddin also faced trial in the Mumbai attack case, but were acquitted by a court that city.