Court Gives Clean Chit to Mohammad Aftab Alam

A joint bench of BIrgunj high court justices Khushi Prasad Tharu and Arjun Maharjan has overturned a verdict of the Rautahat district court that had awarded a life term to Mohammad Aftab Alam, a Nepali Congress leader and former minister, and three others in a brutal murder case dating back to the first elections for the Constituent Assembly, in 2008, and given them a clean chit, citing lack of substantive proof.

On April 25, 2024, a bench of district court judges Matrika Prasad Acharya had issued its judgment against Alam and three others finding them guilty of consigning a group of people, who had sustained injuries while making bombs, to flames in a brick kiln with the intent of destroying the proof of the crime. The others getting the life term were the leader’s brother Mohammad Mohtab Alam, Shekh Saraj and Badri Sahani, an employee at the kiln.