Abu Salem's plea alleging illegal detention not made out, says Delhi HC

Abu Salem. File Pic

The Delhi High Court has said that a habeas corpus petition filed by extradited gangster Abu Salem, serving life imprisonment for his role in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, was not made out as his detention cannot be illegal on being convicted by a court of law.

The high court was hearing Salem's plea seeking to declare his detention in India as illegal and that he be repatriated to Portugal in view of conventions governing the field and the treaty conditions. A habeas corpus petition is filed seeking direction to produce a person who is missing or illegally detained. A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup Jairam Bhambhani said once a court of law has put Salem on trial and held him guilty, how he could say that the custody is illegal.

The bench referred to a Supreme Court judgement and said "even if initially your detention was bad in law, after your conviction by a court of law, your custody does not remain illegal." "A writ of habeas corpus does not lie in this case. It lied when your custody is illegal but here it is not," the bench added.

When Salem's counsel informed the court that his appeals against various court orders were pending before the Supreme Court, the bench said when it was pending adjudication, how he could ask for repatriation and added that the relief cannot be granted this way. Advocate S Hari Haran, appearing for Salem, sought to set aside the detention saying the extradition was done on various assurances which have been violated and his custody becomes illegal.
He said Salem has been convicted for additional charges which were not part of the treaty.

At the request of the counsel to enable him to satisfy the court on the issue of maintainability of the habeas corpus petition, the court listed the matter for November 29. The plea said Salem was extradited in 2002 and has been languishing in jail since then and there is no hope that the pending appeals will be decided anytime soon.

On October 27, the Supreme Court has refused to grant bail to Salem in the murder case. On February 25, 2015, the special TADA court had awarded Salem life imprisonment for murdering Mumbai-based builder Pradeep Jain in 1995, along with his driver Mehndi Hassan.

Another accused in the case Virendra Jhamb's sentence was set off against the period of detention undergone by him in prison during the various stages of investigation in the case. According to the police, on March 7, 1995, Jain was shot dead by assailants outside his Juhu bungalow after he allegedly refused to part with his huge property to Salem.

While one other accused Naeem Khan had turned approver, another accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also become approver, later turned hostile in the court. The trial of Siddiqui was later separated. The court, in January 2014 had dropped some charges against Salem in the case on the request of prosecution which said that some changes need to be withdrawn to maintain cordial relations between two sovereign countries - India and Portugal.

Salem, also a convict in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, was extradited from Portugal on November 11, 2005, after a prolonged legal battle. The Supreme Court of Portugal, in 2012, had dismissed an appeal of the CBI which had challenged the termination of his extradition. In June 2012, Salem was shot at in Taloja Central Jail in Navi Mumbai allegedly by gangster Devendra Jagtap alias JD, an accused in the murder case of advocate Shahid Azmi who had represented a 26/11 Mumbai attack accused.

In June 2017 Salem was convicted and later awarded a life sentence for his role in the 1993 serial blast case in Mumbai. Salem was found guilty of transporting weapons from Gujarat to Mumbai ahead of the blasts. On March 12, 1993, the country's commercial capital had witnessed an unprecedented attack with a series of 12 bomb explosions that took place one after another in about two hours.

Also Read: SC declines bail to gangster Abu Salem in 1995 builder murder case

The dastardly attacks had left 257 dead, 713 persons seriously injured, and destroyed properties worth crores. In 2020, a Portugal court has dismissed a plea of Salem claiming that the Indian government had violated the condition of his extradition.

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