It said a criminal conspiracy was hatched with a final object of secession of J&K from Union of India and within that conspiracy, a conspiracy was hatched to commit certain acts to achieve the object of the original conspiracy and those acts, as discussed above, have been found to be terrorist acts.

The court observed it has been prima facie found that there existed a criminal conspiracy pursuant to which large-scale protests were orchestrated, resulting in violence and arson at massive scale. "It has been argued that these were intended to be peaceful protests following the Gandhian path. However, the evidence prima facie speaks otherwise. Not only were the protests violent, they were intended to be violent... Thus, prima facie their plan was straight from the playbook of the likes of Hitler and the march of the Brownshirts. The object was to overawe the government by the sheer scale of violence and was nothing less than a plan for insurrection," the judge observed.

The court further noted that APHC/Hurriyat/ Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) have been prima facie found to have conspired with terrorist organisations for the purpose.

The court also charged Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Md Yusuf Shah, Aftab Ahmad Shah, Altaf Ahmad Shah, Nayeem Khan, Farooq Ahmad Dar, Md Akbar Khanday, Raja Mehrajuddin Kalwal, Bashir Ahmad Bhat, Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali, Shabir Ahmad Shah, MasaratAlam, Abdul Rashid Sheikh and Naval Kishore Kapoor.

(With inputs from agencies)