A court in Cuttack on Tuesday acquitted Maulana Abdur Rehman, who was arrested in 2015 over alleged links with Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), citing lack of sufficient evidence.
The district and sessions court cleared Rehman of all charges nearly 11 years after his arrest, observing that the prosecution failed to establish the allegations through credible evidence or witness testimony.
Rehman, a resident of Paschimkachha on the outskirts of Cuttack, had been accused of recruiting and radicalising youths for terror-related activities and maintaining links with AQIS.
Investigators had also alleged that he operated a madrasa in Odisha’s Tangi area, where children from economically weaker families in neighbouring Jharkhand were kept in poor conditions. He was further accused of travelling to Saudi Arabia and the UAE in 2015 and making several visits to Jammu and Kashmir.
Three separate cases had been registered against him by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Jamshedpur Police in Jharkhand, and the Cuttack Commissionerate Police. The Odisha Crime Branch later took over the local investigation and invoked sedition charges citing national security concerns.
However, the trial court ruled that the prosecution had failed to provide adequate and reliable evidence to sustain the charges.
Rehman was arrested on December 16, 2015, during a late-night joint operation by the Delhi Police Special Cell and the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Commissionerate Police at his residence under Jagatpur police limits.
Police had seized his passport, mobile phone, tablet and documents during the raid, while his family consistently denied all allegations. Agencies