Cuttack, May 26 A court here on Tuesday acquitted Maulana Abdur Rehman, arrested in 2015 over alleged links with Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), after finding that the prosecution failed to produce sufficient evidence to prove the charges against him.
The district and sessions court delivered the verdict nearly 11 years after his arrest and acquitted him of all charges, observing that the evidence and witness statements placed before it were not adequate to establish the allegations.
Rehman, a resident of Paschimkachha on the outskirts of Cuttack city, was accused of having links with AQIS and of recruiting cadres and radicalising youths for terror-related activities.
Investigators had also alleged that he ran a madrasa in Tangi area where children from economically weaker families of neighbouring Jharkhand were kept in poor living conditions.
He was further accused of travelling to Saudi Arabia and the UAE twice in 2015 and visiting Jammu and Kashmir several times.
Three major cases were registered against him by different agencies, including the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Jamshedpur Police in Jharkhand and Cuttack Commissionerate Police, which was later handed over to the Odisha Crime Branch.
The crime branch had invoked sedition charges, citing national security concerns.
However, the trial court held that the prosecution failed to furnish credible and adequate evidence to sustain the charges.
Rehman was arrested on December 16, 2015, in a late-night raid by a joint team of the Delhi Police Special Cell and the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Commissionerate Police from his residence at Paschimkachha under Jagatpur police limits.
Police had seized his passport, mobile phone, tablet and documents, while his family had denied the allegations.
