JOIN USTen get 8-year jail for chopping hand
A National Investigation Agency (NIA) special court in Kochi on Friday sentenced 10 people to eight years’ imprisonment having convicted them for chopping off a college professor’s palm.
The court had on April 30 pronounced 13 people guilty in the case; the other three convicts were sentenced to two years of imprisonment each.
The case pertains to a July 4, 2010 assault by a group of radical Muslim activists on Professor T J Joseph – who then taught Malayalam at the Newman College in Thodupuzha in Idukki district – over portions in a B.Com question paper he had prepared for an internal examination that allegedly denigrated Prophet Mohammed.
All the accused were activists of the Popular Front of India.
The professor’s right palm was later re-attached in a surgery.
The 10 people sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment are Jamal, Mohammed Shobin, Shamsuddin, Shahnawaz and Pareeth (all involved in the assault), Younus Aliyar, Jaffer, K K Ali, Shejeer and Kasim (all involved in conspiracy).
The three men sentenced to two years’ imprisonment are Abdul Latif, Anwar Siddique and M M Riyas. The accused will also have to pay Rs 8 lakh to Joseph.
Five of the accused including accused number one Savad are absconding.
In the April 30 verdict, 18 people were acquitted. Some of the accused have already spent close to five years in jail and will serve only the remaining term of the sentence.
The NIA is set to appeal to a higher court seeking harsher punishment for the accused. Joseph said the verdict did not make him any happier. “I have already pardoned the accused in the court of my conscience. This verdict does not make me happy even a bit,” the now-retired professor told reporters.