A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Tuesday denied terror accused Faisal Mirza, the permission to attend his mother’s last rites.
Mirza was arrested in May 2018 by the Anti-Terror squad (ATS) for being part of a conspiracy involving the the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to conduct terror attacks in Mumbai, Gujarat and UP and attending a terror training camp in Pakistan.
Special judge under the NIA Act, RR Bhosale however, directed the Superintendent of Arthur Road jail, where Mirza is lodged, to “arrange a video conference on a medium like Whatsapp, telephonic video call, etc or other medium” to enable Mirza to virtually attend the last rites.
Mirza, whose residence is in Behraum Baug in Jogeshwari had made a plea through advocate Arshad Shaikh to allow him to attend the funeral of his mother, who passed away at 10 AM on Tuesday. Adv Shaikh through the plea told court that the last rites were scheduled to be conducted at Jogeshwari Kabristan and requested escorts to be provided by jail authorities free of cost to Mirza as he could not afford them, being from a poor family.
Mirza’s sister had contacted Adv. Shahid Nadeem with the unfortunate news and Nadeem advised the family to file the plea.
The NIA alleges he recruited for terror acts and was a member of a terrorist organization. He was booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), among other sections. The investigation was transferred to the NIA in Aug 2018. Mirza allegedly received training to make bombs, IEDs, weapons and conduct suicide attacks in a Karachi training camp.
