Mumbai, Sep 18 The Bombay High Court on Thursday issued notices to all seven acquitted people, including former BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, the NIA, and the Maharashtra government in the 2008 Malegaon blast case.
A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad, while hearing an appeal seeking reversal of the acquittal, also sought a response from the prosecuting agency, National Investigation Agency (NIA), and the Maharashtra government within six weeks.
The acquitted people have also been told to file their responses to the appeal within six weeks.
Families of the six people who died in the bomb explosion have challenged the July 31 decision of the Special NIA court, claiming that the trial court allowed “a deficient prosecution” to benefit the accused.
Levelling charges of diluting the case, the appeal slammed the NIA for a shoddy probe after taking over the case from the state Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS).
The petitioners claimed that direct evidence was not available in the matter due to secrecy while planning the (blast) conspiracy.
The appeal, filed by Nisar Ahmed Sayyed Bilal and five others through advocate Mateen Shaikh, sought the quashing of the July 31 judgment of Special NIA Judge A.K. Lahoti.
Those set free by the trial court included Pragya Thakur, Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit, Major (Retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, and Sameer Kulkarni.
The explosion killed six people on September 29, 2008, and injured 101 in Malegaon, a communally sensitive town in Maharashtra, when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle detonated near a mosque during the holy month of Ramzan.
On Wednesday, the appellants’ lawyer informed the court that only two of the six petitioners were examined as prosecution witnesses.
The lawyer’s response followed the court’s indication on Tuesday that the option of filing an appeal against the trial court’s acquittal decision was not an “open gate” for everyone, hinting that only those witnesses who were examined by the prosecution during the trial were eligible to do so.
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