NEW DELHI, 30 October 2003 — The Delhi High Court yesterday upheld death sentences on two Kashmiri Muslims for their roles in a deadly attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 but exonerated two others, lawyers said.

The court, after reviewing evidence over the attack that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war, upheld death sentences handed down last year by an anti-terrorism court against Mohammed Afzal and Shaukat Hussain Guru. Both men were said to be affiliated with Jaish-e-Mohammed, an extremist pan-Islamic group battling Indian rule in Kashmir.

The court, however, overturned the conviction of a third man sentenced to die, college lecturer S.A.R. Geelani, as well as Guru’s wife, Afsan Guru, who was sentenced to five years imprisonment for concealing the conspiracy to attack Parliament.

Five armed rebels stormed Parliament on Dec. 13, 2001, killing eight police officers and a gardener before they were shot dead by security forces. A journalist wounded in the attack died months later of his wounds.

India alleged the militants were supported by Pakistani intelligence, leading the nuclear-armed rivals to deploy an estimated one million troops to their borders for eight months.

The anti-terrorism court last December sentenced Afzal, Guru and Geelani to die for “waging war against the state,” in the first judgment under India’s tough Prevention of Terrorism Act.

But the accused were allowed to challenge the verdict after the Delhi High Court said their taped telephone conversations could not be used as evidence because police did not follow guidelines set out by the anti-terrorism act.

Freeing Geelani and Afsan Guru, the court said that the “prosecution has not been able to sustain the charges against them.”

Geelani’s lawyer Ram Jethmalani told the Press Trust of India news agency his client’s acquittal would “restore the confidence of the entire world, particularly the inhabitants of Kashmir in the integrity and competence of Indian judicial system.”

The death sentences had been fervently denounced by Kashmiri separatists, who said the anti-terror laws introduced by India’s ruling Hindu nationalist government were biased against Muslims.

Kashmir is in the throes of a 13-year insurgency that has left tens of thousands of people dead and which India says is fomented by Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.

Lawyers for Afzal and Shaukat Hussain Guru both said they would appeal the death sentences to India’s highest court.

“We have strong grounds to file an appeal in the Supreme Court,” Guru’s lawyer Shanti Bhushan said. “The judgment is totally incorrect in the case of Shaukat.”

The High Court bench of Justice Usha Mehra and Justice Pradeep Nandrajog in its ruling said the Parliament attack had hurt India as the “clouds of war with our neighbor loomed large.”

“After the unfortunate incident, this country had to station its troops at the border and large-scale mobilization of armed forces took place,” it said. “The nation suffered not only an economic strain but even the trauma of an imminent war.”