E-Paper
NIA unlikely to challenge 2008 Malegaon blasts case verdict
Officials cited the Samjhauta train, Ajmer Dargah and Mecca Masjid blasts in 2007, in which Swami Aseemanand was acquitted by different courts.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is unlikely to challenge the acquittal of Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Lt Colonel Prasad Purohit and five others in 2008 Malegaon blast case, just as it hasn’t in other similar cases, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
They cited the Samjhauta train, Ajmer Dargah and Mecca Masjid blasts in 2007, in which Swami Aseemanand was acquitted by different courts.
“As soon as we get the copy of judgment in the 2008 Malegaon case, we will examine it and take a legal opinion. However, our experience has been that in such cases where there is no fresh evidence other than already presented before the trial court, going into appeal may not serve any purpose,” said an NIA officer, who didn’t want to be named.
“Most of these cases didn’t have robust material evidence and were built on identical confessional statements by accused persons or witnesses, who later retracted,” this officer added
Commenting on evidence, the NIA special court in Mumbai observed on Thursday that the prosecution failed to conclusively link the motorcycle found at the site to an explosive device.
The federal agency didn’t officially comment on the judgment on Thursday.
To be sure, the NIA court’s acquittal was a qualified one: “A grave degree of suspicion is established, but not enough to convict them; hence, the court has given them the benefit of the doubt.”
The Malegaon 2008 blast case was first investigated by Maharashtra ATS, which claimed that Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and a right wing group Abhinav Bharat, involving Lt Colonel Prasad, were behind the blast. It named 14 accused , Pragya Thakur, Ramesh Upadhyay, Shrikant Prasad Purohit, Sameer Kulkarni, Rakesh Dhawade, Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Pravin Takalki, Shivnarayan Kalsangra, Shyam Sahu, Ajay alias Raja Rahirkar, Jagdish Mhatre, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange in the charge sheet.
NIA, which took over the probe in April 2011 filed a fresh charge sheet in 2016 dropping charges against Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and five others , Shiv Narayan Kalsangra, Shyam Bhavarlal Sahu, Praveen Takkalki, Lokesh Sharma and Dhan Singh Choudhury. However, the NIA court in December 2017 said Sadhvi Pragya and Purohit would stand trial under terror charges.
In the Samjhauta Express, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blast cases officers handling the probes , including the public prosecutors, investigating officers, SPs, DIGs, IGs, and legal advisors of NIA felt that there was no need to appeal, according to a second officer, who also requested anonymity.
He asserted that “investigation into these cases was over long back as far as NIA was concerned”.
The BJP has claimed that the so-called saffron-error probes launched by the Congress-led UPA government were a conspiracy to malign the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and its affiliates.
