The justice system must respond with its harshest and most unflinching sanction to an act of terror, the Telangana high court asserted in its verdict that confirmed the death penalty to five Indian Mujahideen operatives convicted for executing the 2013 Dilsukhnagar twin bomb blasts in Hyderabad.
Describing their actions as “calculated savagery” and “cold-blooded conspiracy” meticulously designed “to destabilise the social order”, the court’s searing 357-page verdict released late on Wednesday made the case for “harshest and most unflinching sanction” available under law for such crimes.
The coordinated bombings killed 18 people and left 131 grievously injured at a bustling commercial hub in Hyderabad on February 21, 2013.
“When terror bombings strike with calculated ferocity at innocent civilians, the death penalty emerges as the only sanction capable of matching the crime’s existential threat,” stated the division bench of justices K Lakshman and P Sree Sudha. The bench further declared, “When terror strikes the innocent with calculated savagery, the law shall rise with equal and unrelenting force to protect justice’s sanctity and the nation’s soul.”
The five convicts—Asadullah Akhter Haddi Tabrez Danial Asad, Zia Ur Rehman, Mohd Tahseen Akhtar Hassan, Mohd Ahmed Siddibapa and Ajaz Shaikh Samar Armaan—were found guilty of planning and executing what the court termed one of the most heinous attacks to ever confront the Indian justice system.
The bench classified the bombings as “acts of war against the Republic” rather than merely crimes against individuals. “The gravity of this crime lies not merely in its physical toll but in its audacious, unpardonable challenge to the sovereign integrity of the State,” the court ruled.
In rejecting the appeals and upholding the trial court’s 2016 sentence, the high court said it had considered mitigating factors including psychological evaluations, probation officer reports, and rehabilitation prospects. It concluded that the case fulfilled every criterion of the Supreme Court’s “rarest of rare doctrine” established through the landmark Bachan Singh and Machhi Singh judgements of the 1980s.
“This was no spontaneous outburst; it was a cold-blooded conspiracy, marked by the deployment of sophisticated explosives, synchronized detonations, and a strategic selection of targets to maximize carnage and despair,” the bench noted.
The court emphasised that justice demanded the gravest penalty when a crime “thoroughly shocks the conscience of society” and represents an organised effort to disrupt peace and tranquillity of the state. The judgement noted that the crime’s execution “reveals a depravity that defies comprehension” with explosives strategically deployed for maximum devastation.
“A convict becomes a menace and a threat to the harmonious and peaceful coexistence of society when his actions are not the result of a momentary lapse but are premeditated, meticulously executed, and demonstrative of extreme depravity,” the bench observed.
“The collective conscience, so palpably outraged, demands the ultimate sanction—not as retribution, but as a necessary affirmation of justice,” the judgement concluded.
