Malegaon blast witnesses’ confessional statements go ‘missing’
Confessional statements of some witnesses in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case are reported to be “missing” from the special MCOCA court in Mumbai, prompting the authorities to mount a search for those.
Confessional statements of some witnesses in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case are reported to be “missing” from the special MCOCA court in Mumbai, prompting the authorities to mount a search for those.
The issue came to light earlier this week when staff of the special court approached former special public prosecutor (SPP) Rohini Salian to inquire about whether she had with her some of the confessional statements of witnesses.
“I was surprised when such a query was made to me. The court staff asked whether I had confessional statements of six or seven crucial witnesses recorded before a magistrate. I conveyed that all documents had been handed over to the new SPP Avinash Rasal in presence of NIA officers and, in any case, the originals were in the court records only,” Salian said.
The witnesses whose statements have gone missing include those of a close aide of Ramji Kalsangra who had “confessed” before a magistrate about the criminal conspiracy hatched to plant explosives in Malegaon.
Two low-intensity explosions in Malegaon on September 29, 2008, had left seven people dead. The Maharashtra police’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), which investigated the case before it was handed over to CBI and later to NIA in 2011, arrested several, including self-styled Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Srikant Purohit.