India frees two death row Muslims in 1996 car bomb attack
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Buy SPH photosNEW DELHI (AFP) - An Indian court on Thursday acquitted two Kashmiri Muslims sentenced to death for a 1996 car bomb attack in a New Delhi shopping arcade that killed 13 people.
The two men, Mr Mirza Nissar Hussain and Mr Ali Bhat, were handed death sentences by a lower court in 2010, but the Delhi High Court set them free and slammed police for a poor investigation into the bomb attack.
The judges commuted the death penalty of a third man convicted in the case to a life sentence, Press Trust of India reported.
The police failed to adhere to a "minimum standard" in probing the blast that ripped through the Lajpat Nagar shopping area, Judges Ravindra Bhat and G.P. Mittal said in overturning the death sentences.
