1995 Purulia arms case accused won't be extradited to India, rules Denmark court

A court in Denmark ruled on Thursday that Niels Holck, the main accused in the 1995 Purulia arms drop case, will not be extradited to India.

The Purulia case refers to the dropping of a large consignment of rifles, rocket launchers, and missiles from an aircraft in West Bengal’s Purulia district in 1995. Holck is considered to be the leader of the operation. Previously, he has admitted that he was aboard the aircraft and was smuggling arms into West Bengal.

Last year, a Danish public prosecutor had sought Holck’s extradition to India.

Now, the court rejected the extradition request and said that sending Holck to India would violate Denmark’s extradition act due to a risk that he would be subjected to treatment in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, according to Reuters.

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India has sought Holck’s extradition for years. The Associated Press reported that India first sought his extradition in 2002 and even though the Danish government approved it, two Danish courts overturned the extradition over the risk of torture or other inhumane treatment in India.

Last year, when the Danish prosecutor cleared his extradition, Holck’s lawyer said the same risks remained and nothing had changed.

“We have full confidence that the courts this time will also come to the conclusion that he cannot be extradited. The risk of him suffering harm in India is no less now. Nothing fundamentally has changed,” said Holck’s lawyer Jonas Christoffersen to Danish broadcaster DR.

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After the drop, it was reported that the arms were dropped for rebels who would have used them in an armed movement against the Communist government of West Bengal of the day. In a 2011 interview with Times Now, Holck acknowledged that the weapons were meant to be used against the state government. He said the weapons were meant to be used by the people to defend themselves from the state government that had ruled the state for decades.

He told Times Now, “The arms were meant for self-protection. It is my complete conviction that if I was tried in a court of law about the legality of dropping arms to protect people against state sponsored Communist terror, I would clear my name because it was legal defence against decades of murder, torture, rape by the CPI(M) in West Bengal. I have seen friends being butchered in front of my eyes for so many years and all I did was to work for the betterment of the rural people of West Bengal. For 15 years, I worked to better the circumstances of the poorest of the poor in West Bengal, but the atrocities committed by the Communist simply became too much when too many friends were tortured to death so we had to defend ourselves against these attacks and that was the whole background of the Purulia arms drop.”