Adv. Shahid Azmi Murder Case

Advocate Shahid Azmi was a young and handsome, agile and passionate person. He practiced advocacy from his office in Taxi Mens' Colony,Kurla(West), Mumbai -70. He had turned the front part of his home into his office. He was shot at in the same office by the stranger assailants on 11 February,2010.

Shahid Azmi was accused of crime at a young age; in 1992, aged 15, he was arrested for violence during the 1992 Bombay riots. Let off lightly as a juvenile, and due to lack of any proper evidence against him. As a young adult, he was again arrested, this time under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, for plotting against the state. He spent seven years in Delhi's Tihar Jail. In jail, he was encouraged to resume his education, and by the time he was released, he had taken a degree in law. In 2003, he began practising as a criminal defense lawyer in Mumbai. The cases handled by him were almost exclusively of defending cases for those accused of terrorism, who he believed had been jailed as scapegoats. He was shot dead by four assailants in his office in Kurla, Mumbai on 11 February 2010 at the age of 32.

In February 2010, member of the Bharat Nepali gang, Devendra Babu Jagtap alias JD, Pintoo Deoram Dagale, Vinod Yashwant Vichare and Hasmukh Solanki, were arrested by the police under MCOCA. The police however did not conduct any forensic of the murder weapons and claimed that the murder was "solved" by the arrest of the accused.

Couple of months later, in June 2010, Inder Singh, who was Shahid Azmi's peon at the time and the lone eyewitness of the assassination, lodged a complaint alleging receiving a threatening call, which was later traced to Gujarat. On 20 January 2011, MCOCA court dropped the MCOCA charges levelled against the accused in the police chargesheet as it found no evidence suggesting "pecuniary gains were made in the crime, a mandatory aspect for MCOCA charges."

Then in April 2011, while the accused were in a sessions court at Kala Ghoda, for a hearing the police caught a man named Munna reportedly of Navlekar gang, with a weapon and live cartridges in the court premises, who had come allegedly to free the accused.

On 23 July 2012, the Bombay High Court granted bail to one of the accused, Vinod Vichare, against a personal bond of Rs 50,000 stating he was not "shown to be present" during the assassination. Vichare had already spent two years in jail, ever since he was held for the possession of one of the four revolvers given to Bharat Nepali.

In a 2007 interview with Rediff News Correspondent Sheela Bhatt, Shahid Azmi accused the police of staging an encounter at Antop Hill where a Pakistani was killed, because, that area was isolated and "terrorists always hide in places where you find a lot of other people". As it is alleged in the case of Asad Ahmed Encounter Case, press and people asked why would the duo would go to the highly isolated and secluded place. Ro be killed easily. While in the crowded places they could be shielded comfortably. It is notable that in almost every encounter the accused run to an isolated and secluded place.

Shahid Azmi further accused the Intelligence Bureau of perpetrating the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, which are otherwise believed to be the work of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Students Islamic Movement of India. When asked as to why Intelligence Bureau would indulge in such acts against national interests, he said it was to stereotype Muslims and lobby for stringent laws.