New Delhi, July 24 The Supreme Court on Thursday said that the Bombay High Court judgment acquitting 12 accused in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case will not be treated as a binding precedent.
A Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and N. Kotiswar Singh passed the order after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted that the questions of law decided in the impugned judgment will affect other pending trials under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA).
The Justice Sundresh-led Bench also issued notice on the Maharashtra government’s plea challenging the Bombay High Court order in the July 11, 2006, Mumbai blast case.
Directing immediate release of 12 accused, of whom five were on death row and seven others on life imprisonment, the acquittal order passed by a bench of Justices Anil Kilor and S. Chandak on Monday came as a major blow to the investigation agencies in Maharashtra.
The Justice Kilor-led Bench castigated the shoddy probe prosecution, opining that the prosecution failed to even establish the type of bombs used in the crime.
The 12 accused -- incarcerated for 19 years -- succeeded in establishing before the Bombay High Court the fact of torture inflicted on them to extort confessional statements.
As a result, it held the statements inadmissible, saying, "On all the tests relating to voluntariness and truthfulness of the confessional statements, the prosecution failed."
On July 11, 2006, seven bomb serial blasts in packed Mumbai local trains brought the maximum city to its knees within 11 minutes.
The terror attack left 189 dead and over 800 injured.
Earlier in 2015, a special court convicted 12 individuals in the case, sentencing five -- Faisal Shaikh, Asif Khan, Kamal Ansari, Ehtesham Siddiqui, and Naveed Khan -- to death, while the remaining seven were given life imprisonment.
The prosecution had argued that the attack was planned by Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, and carried out by operatives of Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba with help from the Students' Islamic Movement of India, a banned Indian group.
Last week, Chief Justice of India (CJI) B.R. Gavai agreed to urgently list the Maharashtra government’s special leave petition (SLP) for hearing on July 24. Seeking an urgent hearing on the state government’s special leave petition (SLP), Solicitor General Mehta said that it was a “serious matter” requiring the top court’s consideration on “some important issues”.
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