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Malegaon bomb blast case: NIA court says it will pass orders on prosecuting ATS officer at the time of final verdict
A special court in Mumbai has disposed of a plea filed by some accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case seeking to initiate prosecution against a former Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) officer for allegedly planting evidence. The court said it will pass appropriate orders on the plea at the time of the final verdict of the case.
MUMBAI: A special NIA court on Wednesday disposed of a plea filed by some of the accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case seeking to initiate prosecution against a former Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) officer for allegedly planting evidence. The special court said it will pass appropriate orders on the plea at the time of the final verdict of the case.
Special judge AK Lohati said that the prosecution is yet to examine investigating officers of National Investigation Agency (NIA), which took over the probe from the ATS and presently other officials are being examined. “Thus, the evidence of all the prosecution witnesses has not yet been recorded. In such circumstances, commenting on the allegations of planting of RDX would be too early,” said the special judge while disposing of the plea.
The court, however, noted that there was a material contradiction in the charge sheet filed by the ATS, Mumbai and the NIA, which the court said are required to be considered during trial and after completion of evidence, i.e. at the time of final hearing. At this juncture the court said it would amount to picking one version of the incident over the other, which would not be proper.
The court said the accused are facing trial for charges of alleged conspiracy and implementing their secret plan to carry out the bomb blast. It is not the allegations of ATS or NIA that the said officer was also involved in the alleged meeting and conspired with the accused to carry out the alleged bomb blast.
Besides, the court said, during the trial testing the veracity of statements of the witnesses would amount to appreciation of evidence. Moreover, it would be premature to decide the application and to evaluate the prayer of the accused that the officer has misused his post and power as alleged, the court said.
On June 12, accused Sameer Kulkarni had moved a plea before the special NIA court to prosecute a police officer who was part of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) team that investigated the case initially, and purportedly falsely implicated Sudhakar Chaturvedi in the case.
As per the prosecution, late in the evening on September 29, 2008, a bomb planted on a motorcycle went off opposite a religious shrine in the power-loom town, killing six people and injuring 101.
The ATS, which probed the blast case initially, had claimed that the bomb was assembled at Chaturvedi’s residence and had found traces of RDX at his residence. The NIA had, however, doubted the genuineness of the evidence collected by the ATS.
NIA, which took over the probe subsequently, said in its supplementary charge-sheet filed in 2015, “Why API (assistant police inspector, name removed to protect identity of the witness) visited the house of Chaturvedi in absence of the accused, witnesses and why he requested the (NIA) witness to not tell anything about his presence at the house of Chaturvedi.” “This creates doubt on the recovery of swabs of RDX,” the NIA chargesheet added.
The federal agency added that “this brings to doubt the evidentiary value of the FSL Report indicating the presence of the traces of RDX in the swabs taken from the house of Chaturvedi during a search of his house. This recovery itself becomes suspect on the ground that the ATS Mumbai may have planted the RDX traces to implicate him (Chaturvedi) and the other accused persons in the case.”
