2008 Malegaon blast case verdict on July 31

MUMBAI: A special NIA court on Thursday adjourned the judgement in the 2008 Malegaon blast case to July 31. The special judge cited the voluminous nature of the trial documents and directed all accused to be present on the next date. Last month the trial concluded the trial and reserved the matter for verdict on May 8. Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, a former Member of Parliament from the BJP, Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, and Sameer Kulkarni are facing trial under the anti-terror law—Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The explosive device, strapped on a motorcycle, went off near a mosque in Malegaon, a town about 200km from Mumbai in north Maharashtra, on Sept 29, 2008. The blast left six dead and over 100 persons injured

The case has voluminous documents placed on record.During the course of the trial, the prosecution examined 323 prosecution witnesses, of which 34 turned hostile. The case was initially probed by the Anti Terror Squad (ATS), Maharashtra, before being transferred to NIA in 2011. The NIA, after taking over the case, filed a chargesheet in 2016, giving a clean chit to Thakur and three other accused—Shyam Sahu, Praveen Takalki, and Shivnarayan Kalsangra—saying it found no evidence against them and they should be discharged from the case.

The special court, on October 30, 2018, framed charges in the case against seven accused under the stringent sections of the UAPA and IPC. The sections invoked include sections 16 (committing terrorist act) and 18 (conspiring to commit terrorist act) of the UAPA and under IPC sections 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), among others.