Calcutta High Court upholds life sentence to Pakistani terrorist held in Kolkata

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Friday upheld the life sentence to a Pakistani terrorist arrested in Kolkata with explosives in 2009.

A division bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and Shabbar Rashidi upheld the March 2021 trial court order sentencing Pakistani resident Shahbaz Ismail to life imprisonment.

On March 18, 2009, sleuths of Kolkata Police's special task force arrested Ismail, then 27, while he was purchasing a ticket from a railways ticket counter in Kolkata to travel to Srinagar. He was residing in Kolkata with the fake identity of Mohammed Jamil, a resident of the state's Murshidabad district.

From his possession, the STF sleuths fake driving license, fake EPIC card, one mobile phone with Bangladeshi SIM card, explosives, a document containing the names and number of his local contacts and documents on how to prepare explosives.

A case was filed against him under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and Explosives Act. In course of investigation the STF sleuths learnt that Ismail was trained at a Harkat-ul-Mujahideen training camp at Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied- Kashmir in 2007. There he was trained to operate high-end automatic rifles like AK-47, rocket launcher and hand grenades besides making explosives.

In March 2021, the trial court in Kolkata sentenced him to life imprisonment, and he appealed the verdict in the High Court.