Decoding Afzal: Truth is out there

Is Mohammad Afzal a terrorist? What was his role in the attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001?

Is it true that some elements of the Jammu and Kashmir Special Task Force were involved in the conspiracy and it was they who framed Afzal in the case?

Are those campaigning for Afzal’s clemency fully assured of his innocence? And finally are both the police and Afzal hiding some crucial information that the country should know?
These are questions that the CNN-IBN Special Investigation Team tries to address in Decoding Afzal. The team went to Jammu and Kashmir to find answers to these questions that the country has been debating.

On December 13, 2001, when five terrorists attacked Parliament, the heart of Indian democracy, at 1140 hours IST, the security forces responded quickly and all the attackers were killed.

Maulana Masood Ahzar, the head of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), was identified as the mastermind of the attack along with JeM's Kashmir chief Ghazi Baba. Baba was later killed in an encounter on August 30, 2003.

The investigating agencies, tasked with probing the Parliament attack case, arrested four persons accused of conspiring with the terrorists and put them on trial by December 16, 2001.
S A R Geelani, a professor of Arabic Studies at the Delhi University, was sentenced to death by a Sessions Court. However, he was acquitted by the Delhi High Court on October 29, 2003. Afsana Guru, alias Navjot, was also acquitted.

Her husband, Shaukat Hussain Guru, was sentenced to death, but the Supreme Court later commuted it to 10 years. But both the High Court and the Supreme Court upheld the verdict on Afzal, sentencing him to death by hanging.