Abdul Latif Adam Momin, alias Abdul Rehman, sentenced to life in the IC-814 Indian Airlines flight highjack case, has approached the Punjab and Haryana high court seeking directions to authorities to grant him a month's parole as he wants to meet his mother.
Momin, who is lodged in the Patiala central jail, submitted that he was behind the bars since 2000 and had not seen his ailing 90-year-old mother for the past 15 years.
The high court bench of justice Raj Mohan Singh has issued a notice to Punjab on the petition for July 2 and also directed the superintendent, central jail, Patiala, to produce a copy of the order, if any, rejecting the parole case of the petitioner on July 2.
In July 2014, the HC had directed the jail authorities to decide the parole application of Momin within three weeks. The case was decided by the jail authorities but he had not been provided with the copy of the order, Momin submitted.
The petitioner said his behaviour in the jail had been good and even the panchayat from where he belonged to had given assurance that he would not run away if granted parole. Momin hails from Amarpura in Patan district of Uttar Pradesh.
{{/usCountry}}The petitioner said his behaviour in the jail had been good and even the panchayat from where he belonged to had given assurance that he would not run away if granted parole. Momin hails from Amarpura in Patan district of Uttar Pradesh.
{{/usCountry}}The Indian Airlines flight IC-814 from Kathmandu with 180 passengers on board was hijacked on December 24, 1999, while flying over Lucknow towards Delhi and was later taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
On February 5, 2008, Patiala sessions' court, designated as an anti-hijacking court, sentenced all three convicts namely Momin, Yusuf Nepali and Dilip Bhujail to life imprisonment. All three were accused of helping the hijackers by facilitating them with passports, accommodation, arms and ammunition.
A total of five hijackers - Ibrahim Athar (brother of Jash-e-Mohammed head Masood Azhar), SA Sayed, alias Doctor, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, ZI Mistri, alias Bhola, and RG Verma, alias Shakir, who had succeeded in flying the aircraft to Kandahar, had negotiated with the Indian government and finally secured the release of three dreaded terrorists - Masood Azhar, Omar Sayeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Zargar - in exchange of the passengers.