Who is Mohammad Arif alias Ashfaq, Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist on death row in the 2000 Red Fort attack case?

The Indian
Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a review petition filed by Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LeT) terrorist Mohammad Arif alias Ashfaq against the death penalty in
connection with the 2000 Red Fort attack case.

Also Read | Indian Supreme Court affirms LeT terrorist Mohammad Arif’s death penalty in 2000 Red Fort attack case

On December
22, 2000, three people, including two Army personnel were killed in India’s Red
Fort. Mohammad Arif, an LeT operative, was convicted of the crime and was later
awarded a death sentence by a sessions court. On August 10, 2011, the Indian
Supreme Court upheld Arif’s death sentence.

Who is Mohammad
Arif?

Mohammad
Arif, a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative, is a Pakistani national. On December 22,
2000, a group of people entered India’s Red Fort complex and initiated
indiscriminate firing. They gunned down three people. Mohammad Arif was
arrested on December 25, three days later. On October 24, 2005, a sessions
court found him guilty. The next week, he was awarded a death sentence.

The Delhi
High Court affirmed Mohammad Arif’s death sentence on September 13, 2007.

Four years
later, the Indian Supreme Court dismissed his appeal against the conviction and
his review petition was subsequently dismissed.

The Supreme
Court confirmed the Delhi High Court’s award of a death sentence stating: “It
was an attack on Mother India. This is apart from the fact that as many as
three people had lost their lives. The conspirators had no place in India. Appellant
was a foreign national and had entered India without any authorisation or even
justification.”

“This is
apart from the fact that the appellant built up a conspiracy by practicing
deceit and committing various other offences in furtherance of the conspiracy
to wage war against India as also to commit murders by launching an unprovoked
attack on the soldiers of the Indian Army. We, therefore, have no doubts that
death sentence was the once sentence in the peculiar circumstance of this case.”