Batla house convict Ariz Khan's dual life: From Nepal citizenship to alleged revival of terror org

The memories of the infamous Batla House encounter were once again revived, when on October 12, the Delhi High Court commuted the death sentence of Ariz Khan to life imprisonment while upholding his conviction.

Now, 38 Ariz Khan, has been convicted not only for killing decorated Police Officer Mohan Chand Sharma, but also for planning the Delhi blasts on September 13, 2008. Ariz Khan escaped under mysterious circumstances from the Batla House encounter where Mohan Chand Sharma had lost his life.

Documents retrieved by Republic Digital, now reveal how Ariz Khan even after the Batla House encounter did not change his ways. In fact, in the span of ten years when he was absconding from the clutches of law, Ariz Khan was trying to revive the Indian Mujahideen group and Student Islamic Movement of India (Radical wing).

Escaping from Batla House, Ariz Khan moved to Nepal and was living under the alias Junaid. In Nepal, he resided in the Birat Nagar area where he was helped by a person identified as Mohammad Salem. Subsequently, Ariz Khan also obtained citizenship in Nepal during this period.

The Indian Mujahideen and other Islamic outfits like Al Qaeda radicalise a large number of Indian youth, used to send them to Pakistan for training via Iran, Bangladesh, Dubai and Nepal. Ariz Khan was tasked with arranging fake passports and providing logistics support for this initiative.

Investigation documents on Ariz Khan also reveal how he used to travel to Saudi Arabia quite often to arrange for finances and meet associates of various Islamic outfits that were detrimental to the National Security of the country. On February 14, 2018, the Delhi Police based on the terrorist activities of Ariz imposed the charge of UAPA Section 18 on Ariz.

A month after the filing of this FIR, the Delhi Police was able to arrest Ariz Khan on March 15, 2018. Ariz, during his course of interrogation claimed that besides Hindi, English he also knew Arabic and Nepali while he was in hiding.

Son of a journalist (Ariz's father used to write columns for a local newspaper in Delhi) and a teacher (his mother was a kindergarten teacher), Ariz wanted to be a student at Aligarh Muslim University but was unable to do so.

He then dabbled between Lucknow, and Delhi to prepare for becoming an Engineer. While Ariz was able to get an admission in engineering college in Muzzhafarnagar with extremely low grades, he could not sustain his education and thus, left his engineering course mid-way in 2008. By this time, however, his radicalisation had started and from 2006 onwards Ariz had begun providing logistics support to Indian Mujahideen terror activities.

The name of Ariz had come forward in the IM orchestrated blasts of Faizabad, Lucknow and Banaras court blasts on November 23, 2007, Jaipur blasts on May 13, 2008, and Surat and Ahmedabad blasts on 26 July 2008.

The Delhi Blasts were planned as it was felt by the Indian Mujahideen machinery then that the Gujarat blasts had not created as much of an impact as it should have done.

Ariz was responsible for getting the logistics of explosives from Udipi, Karnataka. In the Delhi blasts, Ariz was found to be responsible for conducting blasts in the M block market Greater Kailash that led to the death of more than 20 people.

On the day Ariz Khan's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, Republic Digital spoke to Maya Sharma the wife of martyr Mohan Chand Sharma.

" I am disappointed at the commuting sentence of Ariz Khan from death to life sentence. This is not a good signal you are sending to people who are fighting terrorism. At a time when the country continues to fight against terrorism you cannot go soft on terror with judgements like these," said Maya Sharma.