Terror accused invoke news channels to prove innocence

Delhi serial blasts suspect wants footage of the explosions preserved

Delhi serial blasts suspect wants footage of the explosions preserved

News channels are biased, make mountains out of a molehill, trivialize important incidents by joining unrelated incidents and ask irrelevant questions.

We have all heard that.

Now, a terror accused has come forward to endorse whatever they have been doing all these years. Zia-ur-Rehman, one of the accused of the September 2008 serial blasts in Delhi, has pleaded before a local court that the footage of the blasts should be preserved so that he could invoke it in his defence.

MS Khan, counsel for Zia, told the court that the prosecution's claims are in direct contradiction with the news footage of the blasts for September 13-19.

Five synchronized blasts ripped through the national capital on the evening of September 13 killing 26 people and injuring 133. Terror group Indian Mujahideen had claimed responsibility for the blasts.

The Delhi Police had caught 12 suspects a few days after the incidents and two were killed in an encounter in a flat at South Delhi's Jamia Nagar a week after the explosions.

Through the lens: Five serial blasts in September 2008 killed 26 people and injured over a hundred in Connaught Place, Karol Bagh and Greater Kailash file photos

The records sought to be preserved include video clippings and statement of the witness and other material shown during the blasts related news. "We have requested the court to issue direction to the channels to save their footage between September 13 to 19," said MS Khan. The application was filed in the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Kaveri Baweja.u00a0

The accused also apprehended that the video footage could be destroyed in case no direction or notice is issued to the channels.

The application also referred to a news item stating that Asif Mohammad Khan, a local RJD MLA, who is facing sedition charge for pasting posters of the banned SIMI, got a breather when a television journalist told a Delhi court that the visuals were not available with the channel.

Zia's plea is likely to come up for hearing on October 15, the date for which a production warrant has been issued against 11 accused in the five cases registered following as many blasts in the city.