After 17-Year Wait, TADA Convict Granted Parole for Son’s Wedding

Behind bars for 23 years, Fazlur Rehman Sufi was granted interim bail once to go home for 10 days in 2000.

Representational image of prisoner behind bars. 

(Photo: iStock)

After a 17-year-long wait, a TADA convict will meet his family for a week.

Fazlur Rehman Sufi was convicted in 2004 under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) for his role in a series of bomb blasts in five trains on the intervening night of 5-6 December 1993.

Sufi was an accountant in Mumbai before he was arrested in 1994. Behind bars for 23 years, he was granted interim bail to go home for 10 days in 2000, at a time when he was still under trial.

After conviction in 2004, Sufi’s parole applications were rejected twice – in 2006 and 2014, which he filed to attend his daughters’ weddings.

Now set to walk free for a week on Saturday, 23 December, 60-year-old Sufi will go home to attend his son’s wedding, which is to take place in Mumbai on 26 December.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Sufi’s lawyer Ahmad said that the Rajasthan High Court bench, comprising of Chief Justice Pradeep Nandarog and Justice Dinesh Chandra Somani, granted parole based on the fact that he had been in jail for the last 23 years.

According to the IE, the Supreme Court, which convicted Sufi, had laid out some guidelines for parole while hearing another accused’s plea in the case in September. In its judgement, the apex court had observed an earlier High Court dismissal of parole plea as an ‘abdication of power vested in the High Court.’

The Rajasthan High Court had, in the earlier case, observed that it would not be able to grant parole as the convict was convicted by the apex court.

Though Sufi’s visit to his Mumbai home will be short, his family is ecstatic to see him. Speaking to The Indian Express, his brother Junaid Ahmad said:

<p>Two days will be spent in the journey to Mumbai and back. We will only have five days to spend time with him.</p>

But this deters neither Sufi nor his family, who are hoping that all the required paperwork and legal formalities end on time.