KATHMANDU, Jan 14: The scheduled hearing on the case against Nepali Congress (NC) leader Mohammad Aftab Alam has been postponed. As most of the judges of the Rautahat District Court were on leave, the hearing on the case scheduled for Sunday was postponed.

Sources at the court said that the hearing on the case against Alam could not be held as only two of the seven judges were present at the court on Sunday.

Out of the seven benches in the court, only two benches were operational due to the absence of five judges. According to court sources, only two cases will be heard out of the six cases pending on Sunday as only Judges Tej Bahadur Khadka and Gehendra Pant were present at the district court.

Naib Subba (non-gazetted first-class officer) Ekramul Haque of the Rautahat District Court said that while Judge Khadka is supposed to deal with the case at Bench No. 2 and Judge Pant the case at bench No. 4, Alam's case was in Bench No. 5.

Haque said that after Sunday's hearing was postponed, the next hearing would be scheduled later.

In November, the court, considering the seriousness and complexity of the case, ordered the public prosecutor and Alam's lawyers to submit their argument notes within 15 days.

Earlier, the district court and high court had sentenced Alam to jail on the charge of burning Trilok Pratap Singh ‘Pintu’ and Oshi Akthar and a dozen other people alive at a brick factory. These people were the victims or witnesses of the 2008 Rautahat bomb attack. The blast, which occurred at the cowshed of one of Alam’s relatives when the victims were making bombs, had allegedly left 14 dead and eight injured. Alam has been accused of taking the blast-injured and the dead to a nearby brick kiln and throwing them into the furnace to destroy the evidence of the blast.

 
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