ATS tortured me to extract confession: Malegaon blast accused

In his statement to the court, major Ramesh Upadhyay, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, has claimed that the entire investigation by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) was false and fabricated

rutuja.gaidhani@hindustantimes.com

Ramesh Upadhyay (Hindustan Times)

MUMBAI: In his statement to the court, major Ramesh Upadhyay, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, has claimed that the entire investigation by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) was false and fabricated. This comes a week after co-accused Lt Col Prasad Purohit claimed in his statements that the narrative was fabricated and concocted.

A powerful bomb kept on a motorcycle went off around 9:30pm on September 29, 2008, near Hamidia Masjid in Malegaon, a communally sensitive textile town in the Nasik district of North Maharashtra. Six persons were killed and 101 injured in the blast that was probed initially by the ATS and then taken over by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2011.

The prosecution, in its charge sheet, cited transcripts of phone conversations between Upadhyay and the prime accused Shrikant Purohit as prime evidence against the former.

However, in his statement to the court under section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code, Upadhyay claimed that he was “beaten up mercilessly, tortured ruthlessly and asked to confess to a crime he had not committed.”

In his statements, Upadhyay recalled that he was arrested on Diwali night when he refused to bow down to their wishes to give a confession or falsely name or falsely implicate any other person or a co-accused.

He added that during investigation, his interrogation was conducted by the then Additional CP Sukhwinder Singh in the presence of two other police officials, who audio- and video-recorded his interrogation and told him to read out passages, following which Singh got Upadhyay’s signature on scores of blank papers, diaries and printed pages in Marathi along with his thumb and finger prints, claiming it was all part of police procedure.

Upadhyay said that he complied with Singh’s orders in good faith and had no reasons to doubt them.

Calling the panchnamas fake, transcripts fabricated, all conversations allegedly intercepted false and fabricated and all evidence false, fabricated and planted by ATS Mumbai to create evidence against him, Upadhyay alleged that the squad did so due to the political pressure exerted upon them by the UPA government.