Lucknow, Jan. 16: Trusting phone calls that offered unexpected cash prizes have led many to lose hard-earned money to fraudsters. Shaikh Mukhtar Hussain, 39, of Nandigram lost a bit more.

He spent eight-and-a-half years of his life in jail on terror charges, allegedly trumped up by Bengal and Uttar Pradesh police, before being acquitted two days ago.

The resident of Chillogram in East Midnapore had received the call on June 22, 2007. It said a game he had played on his cellphone had won him Rs 5,000, which he should collect in two days.

"The stranger called me to the (nearby) Nandakumar area the next day. On arrival, I saw three men waiting for me," Mukhtar said. "They overpowered me, pushed me into a vehicle, covered my face with a cloth and started thrashing me."

Mukhtar is among four men, including three from Bengal, who were branded Pakistan-trained operatives of the Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami and thrown into a Lucknow jail in the summer of 2007. A court acquitted them all on Thursday for want of evidence.

Mohammad Shoeb, their lawyer, argued in court that the Bengal CID had picked up three of his clients and handed them over to Uttar Pradesh police to frame them.

Azizur Rahman, 31, a scooter mechanic from Bashirhat in North 24-Parganas, and Ali Akbar Hussain, 36, a madarsa teacher from Bongaon in the same district, narrated stories similar to Mukhtar's.

Rahman said he was arrested from his village in a robbery case on June 11, 2007, and handed over to Uttar Pradesh police 18 days later.

While Mukhtar and Rahman can narrate their stories, Ali Akbar seems to have lost his mental balance during his days in custody.

He mostly remains silent. At other times he often forgets, in the middle of a sentence, what he was talking about.

The fourth accused to be acquitted was Naushad Hafiz, 28, of Bijnore town in Uttar Pradesh. The chargesheet accused him and the others of plotting "to terrorise UP on the direction of their bosses in Pakistan".

During the trial in Lucknow, the police registered one more case on August 12, 2008, accusing the quartet of chanting anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans on the court premises.

Shoeb, whom a group of lawyers had attacked for defending the accused, told The Telegraph that the court dismissed this charge too.

The lawyer said Bengal police and their Uttar Pradesh counterparts had failed to "cook the case properly".

"Uttar Pradesh police's special task force had claimed that all four were in Lucknow on June 22, 2007, and had planned a terrorist attack in the city but were arrested the next day," Shoeb said.

He said he had countered this in the Lucknow court by furnishing a Bengal police document that said Rahman had been produced in a North 24-Parganas court in a robbery case around the same time.

"The special task force claimed to have recovered an AK-47, 2kg of RDX, 10 detonators and 10 hand grenades. But they remained silent when judge S.A.M. Rizvi asked where these munitions were and why the accused hadn't used them during capture," Shoeb said.

He added: "All these arrests seem to have been made on the basis of a tip-off from central intelligence agencies."

Rahman and Mukhtar gained one particular skill in jail, though. "Neither of us spoke or understood Hindi before," Mukhtar said.

"We were interrogated for 14 days. The police would ask questions in Hindi and we would answer in Bengali without understanding them. There was none to interpret what we said and still the police prepared our 'confessions' in Hindi."

He added: "Now, after eight-and-a-half years, we have learnt Hindi."