Mistaken identity, claims ‘Pak spy’
ROORKEE / NAINITAL: Days after a bench of Uttarakhand high court recommended action against a judge and then Haridwar SSP for letting an alleged Pakistan spy walk free in 2013, the man, named Asad Ali, who was quickly arrested from his house in Roorkee and released on bail, said he was innocent and a victim of mistaken identity. Ali told TOI he was picked up by police in 2010 because his father's name and the real spy the police were looking for shared the same name.
"My name is Asad Ali and not Abid Ali as mentioned in police records.
I was picked up by the police in 2010 because my father's name matched with the man police were looking for. I originally belong to Gurdaspur in Punjab and had to move to Yamunanagar of Haryana state during the Punjab unrest after I was separated from my family. I moved to Meerut in 1998 and settled in Roorkee in 2008. I got married six months after I moved to Roorkee," said Ali.
A source in the state intelligence confirmed to TOI that it could be a case of mistaken identity. "The man of the same name came from Pakistan in 2005 and went missing. Police were looking for the same person when they arrested him in 2010," an intelligence official told TOI on the condition of anonymity.The police FIR dated December 25, 2010 states that Asad Ali was found with nine pages of photocopied 'sensitive information' about cantonment areas of Roorkee and Meerut along with a passport on a Meerut address, two Nokia phones, an ATM card, a laptop, a pen drive and a bank receipt with deposit of Rs 30,000.
Ali said he runs an advertising agency where various people come to him with all kinds of material. "My clients include the sitting Haridwar mayor. I get printing orders of all kinds of material. I do not know which ones of them were found to be sensitive by the cops," he said.
Ali was charged and convicted by the trial court in December 2012 under various sections of IPC as well as section 14 of the Foreigners Act, 1946; 12 (1A) A of the Passport Act and sections 3, 4 and 9 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923.
He was lodged in Haridwar district jail at the time.
He filed an appeal in the district court and was acquitted in July 2013 by the second additional sessions judge (whose name TOI is withholding). Pointing out various discrepancies in the case, the high court had said on Friday that Ali, when lodged in jail, used his thumb impression to file documents of his appeal while in the order sheet which had convicted him, he had signed in English.
News Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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