The Bombay High Court on Monday, July 21, has acquitted all 12 accused in the 2006 Mumbai local train blast case. The incident involved seven explosions in trains on July 11, 2006, which had killed 189 people and injured over 800 passengers. Earlier in September 2015, the MCOCA trial court had convicted them, sentencing five to death and seven to life imprisonment.
The top court set aside the September 30, 2015, order of the special MCOCA court, saying there was no evidence to uphold the guilty verdict. According to the high court, the prosecution failed to establish its case against all the accused. The prosecution failed to say what kind of explosion was used. The confession statements failed the test of validity, accepted defence arguments of torture before alleged confessions and the HC also discarded the identification parade, for want of proper authority as well as deposition of a witness who identified the accused during the trial as lacking credibility.
Earlier, the trial court had sentenced seven to life. On January 31 this year, after almost seven months of hearing appeals and confirmation references, a special HC bench of Justices Anil Kilor and SM Chandak had reserved judgment on the fate of five individuals sentenced to death by a special trial court in 2015 for the synchronised train bombings of July 11, 2006, in Mumbai, along with seven other convicts. In criminal law, a death sentence given by a trial court needs to be first confirmed by a higher court to be an executable sentence.
Who Was Acquitted?
Kamal Ansari, Mohammad Faisal, Ataur Rehman Sheikh, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan, and Asif Khan were all convicted for planting the bombs. All six were sentenced to death. One of them, Kamal Ansari, died in Nagpur jail due to a COVID-19 infection. The remaining five have now been acquitted.
The other seven convicts — Tanveer Ahmed Ansari, Mohammad Majid Shafi, Sheikh Mohammad Ali Alam, Mohammad Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzzamil Ataur Rahman Sheikh, Suhail Mehmood Sheikh, and Zameer Ahmed Latifur Rahman Sheikh — have also been acquitted by the court.
On July 11, 2006, a total of seven bomb blasts took place in Mumbai local trains around 6:30 pm. The explosions occurred at Matunga, Mahim, Bandra, Jogeshwari, Borivali, Kandivali, and Mira Road railway stations. More than 209 people were killed and over 700 were injured.
Since Mumbai local trains are extremely crowded during the evening rush hour, the bombings were carried out with the aim of causing maximum casualties. After the investigation, it was concluded that the attacks were orchestrated by terrorist organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).