New Delhi, Nov. 11: A terror suspect has been acquitted within a year of his arrest because the CBI had earlier declared him absconding even as he was lodged in a Srinagar jail.

Mohammad Ahsan Dar will not walk free after the acquittal by a Tada (anti-terror) court here today. Lodged in Jammu’s Udhampur jail, he faces a string of other terror cases, but the apparent oversight has left a trail of questions on the way the country’s premier probe agency operates.

Jammu and Kashmir police arrested Dar in January this year saying he was a former Hizb-ul Mujahideen militant on a mission to revive militancy in the Valley at the behest of Pakistan’s ISI.

The case in which Dar was wanted dates back to March 1991, when two suspects, Ashfaq Hussain Lone and Shahbuddin Ghouri, were arrested from Delhi for allegedly trying to step up terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

The CBI chargesheet against the duo made Dar a co-accused on the basis of their statements that he had received $10,000 and a letter from Hizb-ul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin.

In 1992, Dar was declared a proclaimed offender on the CBI’s plea.

Six years later, the court awarded Lone and Ghouri seven years’ jail. Lone was Hizb-ul deputy chief of intelligence, while Ghouri was an MPhil student from Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

But Dar, who the CBI claimed was absconding, had been in jail in Srinagar all along since his arrest in 1994 on charges of fanning militancy under the Muslim Mujahideen, an outfit he himself founded.

The goof-up meant the CBI couldn’t use the Tada provision under which statements of co-accused, in this case Lone and Ghouri, are accepted as valid evidence.

Section 15 of Tada says confessional statements of a co-accused are admissible only if there is a joint trial. This could have very well been ensured since Dar was already in jail during the trial period.

Since the trial of Lone and Ghouri was over, their statements couldn’t be used as evidence in a fresh trial against Dar — after his arrest this January.

However, sources say there is more to the goof-up than mere oversight. The sources claim Dar was once a double agent, an informer for security forces. As a result of this, he had broken away from the Hizb-ul Mujahideen.

In 1995, sources say he was kept in a Jammu guesthouse at a time a breakaway Hizb faction was in talks with the Centre.

“Many suspected militants are arrested by the CBI. How many get away with a closure report saying there is no confessional statement? The CBI has helped him get away,” said a Kashmiri activist who was released after serving a few years in jail on being convicted under the public safety act.