Kanpur: A Vishnupuri Labour Colony resident and a retired principal Ram Babu Shukla (60) was shot on October 24, 2016, while he was returning home on a bicycle. The miscreants shot him in the Pyondi village. Initially, the police took the incident as a simple murder and booked a case against the unidentified.However, on March 7 2017, a deadly blast happened on the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train. The explosion left 10 injured. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) was also involved to probe the blast case.The breakthrough in the case came when the police arrested Mohammed Faisal Khan for his involvement in the Madhya Pradesh train explosion of March 7, 2017. Revelations made by him led to the arrest of his other associates including Atif Muzzaffar.On February 28 2023, the NIA court awarded death sentences to Atif, Mohammed Faisal Khan, and five others in a terror conspiracy case registered in 2017.Atif and Faisals role in the murder of Ram Babu Shukla came to light during their questioning in the Ujjain-Bhopal train blast case.The NIA court charged Atif and Faisal under the sections of IPC 320 (murder) and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) along with sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Arms Act.On September 4, 2023, NIA in a press release stated that the chargesheet filed against the convicts Atif and Faisal in 2018 revealed that they had been radicalised by the ISIS ideology and were out to kill whom they believed to be kafirs (disbelievers). During a probe by NIA it came to fore that the accused were operating under the influence of ISIS.They had conspired to carry out terrorist activities (jihad) in India by targeting non-Muslims through violent acts. In order to promote the ISIS ideology and agenda, they murdered Ram Babu to create terror.Earlier, on March 7, 2017, the third accused in the case, Saifullah, was neutralised in a confrontation with the Anti-Terrorist Squad of Uttar Pradesh. Atif and Faisal had waylaid Ram Babu on October 24, 2016, while he was on way back home on a bicycle and later shot him.The NIA recovered the pistol used in the murder from a house in Haji Colony, Lucknow. The bullet recovered from the body of the principal was tested at FSL Chandigarh.On examination it came to fore that Ramesh was killed by the bullet fired from the pistol recovered from the same house. he hearing of the Ram Babu murder case of Kanpur has been going on in the NIA court since 2017.Two terrorists are in custody. To gather important clues in this case, 64 witnesses along with 61 documents have been examined in the court.Statements of 29 witnesses including state minister Asim Kumar Arun have been recorded in the case. Asim Arun was then IG of Anti- Terrorist Squad. The remaining witnesses are people belonging to Peondi village and its adjoining Jajmau area in Kanpur.

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