Batla House verdict: only man arrested found guilty of killing Delhi cop MC Sharma

In September 2008, seven officers of the Delhi Police stormed an apartment building in Batla House in Delhi's Jamia Nagar. They later alleged that terrorists from the Indian Mujahideen were holed up here.

Two suspected terrorists were shot dead along with Inspector MC Sharma, who was leading the police team. Shahzad Ahmed, whose passport was found in the flat, was arrested a year and a half later from his village in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh. A fourth managed to escape. They all belonged to Azamgarh.

Reacting to the verdict, the BJP said that Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who had declared the encounter was staged, must apologise.

Various politicians and activists alleged the encounter was fake and Inspector Sharma was shot dead due to "inter-departmental rivalry". They cited the fact that he was not wearing a bullet-proof vest while facing men believed to be deadly terrorists.

The encounter at Batla House occurred days after serial blasts in Delhi in which more than 26 people were killed and over 100 injured.

The police said that it had information that the men hiding at the Batla House flat were involved in that terror attack.

Shahzad Ahmad's lawyer had alleged that he was not in the apartment where the alleged terrorists were located after a tip-off. He will be sentenced on Monday.

After the encounter, teams of the Delhi Police were deployed for raids in Azamgarh, provoking protests from locals and leaders of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

Then Home Minister P. Chidambaram asserted that the encounter was genuine.

While campaigning in Azamgarh during the Uttar Pradesh elections last year, senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid had said party chief Sonia Gandhi "cried" when she was shown photographs of the Batla House encounter. After political whiplash, Mr Khurshid said that he had been misquoted.