Following their alleged attack on a fellow prisoner who was awaiting trial on December 16, the administration of Bengaluru Central Prison at Parappana Agrahara filed a complaint against five inmates on January 25. In a bombing case that took place on April 17, 2013, close to the BJP office in Bengaluru, the victim had decided to enter a guilty plea.
According to officials, all of the defendants in the bombing case are awaiting trial. They claimed that Jail Superintendent Mallikarjun B reported the assault to the Parappana Agrahara police.
A key accused from Coimbatore in the blast case, Kichan Buhari, and four of his colleagues, Zulfikar Ali, Shihabuddin, Ahmed Bava, and Bilal Ahmed Kyuta, allegedly beat up undertrial prisoner Syed Ali after he allegedly planned to enter a guilty plea in the blast case.
The superintendent stated that the jail administration had not been informed of the issue earlier. As per police sources, Syed was scheduled to enter a guilty plea in the bombing case alongside another defendant and had already submitted an application to the court.
Buhari’s family claimed in this month’s court proceedings, that he had been held in solitary confinement. An attorney for Syed notified the trial court on January 10 that the other accused in the case and he were at odds over his decision to file an application under Section 229 of the Criminal Procedure Code to enter a guilty plea.
The lawyer for Syed had asked the judge to move his client to a different prison cell. A second accused, who also wanted to enter a guilty plea, is reportedly ill.
Up to 25 people have been charged in connection with the bombing on April 17, 2013, which occurred close to the BJP office in Malleswaram, north Bengaluru, and is associated with the banned Al Ummah group in Tamil Nadu and its affiliates. The 2013 election-related blast that took place while the BJP was in government in Karnataka was reported to cause 16 casualties.
Bangalore: Blast near BJP office injures 16 people http://t.co/XLbsinlXGS
— NDTV (@ndtv) April 17, 2013
R Ashoka, the then-home minister for Karnataka, had labelled the blasts as “terrorist activity” and claimed that BJP members were the intended target.
