New Delhi, July 25: A Delhi court today convicted the suspected Indian Mujahideen operative Shahzad, 24, in the controversial 2008 Batla House encounter case and held him guilty of murdering a police inspector and assaulting other officers on duty.

The verdict also puts an end to the five-year-old raging controversy of the genuineness of the encounter, which many believed was staged. Soon after the encounter there was a clamour for judicial probe by a section of people including civil rights group who claimed that the encounter was fake.

“Shahzad has been found guilty of firing at police officials and causing death of inspector Mohan Chand Sharma and attempting to cause death of head constables Balwant Singh and Rajbir Singh. He is also found guilty of assaulting police officers and obstructing them from doing their duty,” additional sessions judge Rajender Kumar Shastri pronounced in the open court.

The court will pronounce order on the quantum of punishment on July 29.

The judge said he was found guilty of murder, attempt to murder, obstructing and assaulting public servants and grievously injuring the police officers to deter them from performing their duty.

On September 19, 2008, acting on a tip-off, a team of special cell officials swooped down in broad daylight at flat 108 of L-18 Batla House in southeast Delhi’s Jamianagar. Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma lost his life in an encounter between the raiding team and suspected IM operatives. Head constable Balwant also sustained bullet injuries.

Of the five suspected terrorists in the flat, Atif Amin and Mohammed Sajid were also killed in the shootout.

Shahzad and another accused Junaid (now proclaimed offender) escaped, while suspected IM operative Mohammad Saif surrendered.

Shahzad was arrested from his house in Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh in February 2010. Mohammad Saif was not made an accused in this case as according to the prosecution, he had surrendered peacefully and did not play any part in the entire incident.

Civil rights groups had pointed to several unanswered questions that arise from the sequence of events and said Jamianagar, a congested low and middle-income neighbourhood hugging the Yamuna, has always been on the watchlist of special cell officials by sheer dint of its majority minority community composition.

Police had claimed that two suspected militants jumped rooftops that stand cheek-by-jowl in the warren-like locality during the dramatic operation which began at 10am. Chand Sharma, 41, a gallantry award winner who led the operation and was the first to be hit, died in Holy Family Hospital close to the encounter site.