Overview
- A Cuttack district and sessions court acquitted Mohammad Abdur Raheman Ali Khan on Tuesday, saying the prosecution failed to prove sedition and terrorism links to Al‑Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent.
- The judge recorded that investigators offered no convincing material linking the accused to notorious terrorists, to travel to Pakistan, or to receipt of terror funding.
- The court noted heavy evidentiary gaps after the prosecution examined 46 witnesses and offered 55 documents, with 17 witnesses turning hostile and key bank depositors not questioned.
- Multiple agencies had filed cases against him over the years, including the Odisha Crime Branch, the Delhi Police special cell and the NIA, producing parallel and fragmented prosecutions.
- The acquittal applies only to the Cuttack case and does not affect a separate NIA conviction in Delhi that resulted in a seven‑year sentence, a development that keeps his legal status unsettled.