7 accused of Malegaon blast 2008 are on trial under UAPA and IPC. The witness of the Malegaon blasts told the court that he was tortured by the ATS as earlier the investigation of the entire matter was also being done by the ATS team. Apart from this, the witness disclosed before the court that the investigating agency had pressured him to name Yogi Adityanath and 4 other RSS affiliates.
The names of 4 people and a total of 7 people were revealed as the main accused of the Malegaon blasts. The four main accused were Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, former Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay, and Swami Dayanand Pandey. After the initial investigation of the blasts was done by Maharashtra ATS, a section of UAPA was imposed on it. Then this case was handed over to the NIA (National Investigative Agency). After which, in this case, a total of 7 accused including Colonel Purohit and Sadhvi were charged with hatching a terrorist conspiracy. The ATS found in the investigation that the links of its accused were also related to the 2006 Malegaon blasts.
2008 Malegaon blast case | A witness tells Special NIA court that he was tortured by ATS, the then probe agency of the case. He also told the court that ATS forced him to falsely name Yogi Adityanath and 4 other people from RSS.
— ANI (@ANI) December 28, 2021
Let us tell you that Malegaon is a village in the Nashik district of Maharashtra. The blast took place on September 29, 2008, near Noorji Masjid at Bhiku Chowk, when people were going to offer Namaz. This bomb was placed in a motorcycle. Radical Hindu organizations were behind the blast. The initial investigation of which was handed over to the ATC team of Maharashtrian. Seven people were killed and around 80 were injured in the blasts.
What were the charges framed against the accused?
All of them were charged under sections 18 (committing the terroristic act) and 16 (conspiracy to commit terroristic act) of the UAPA, besides sections 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the Explosives Act. On April 25, 2017, the Bombay High Court had granted bail to Pragya Thakur and six of her associates. Pragya remained in jail for eight years. After this, Colonel Purohit was also granted bail in August 2017 by the Supreme Court after spending nine years in jail.
In December 2017, Sections 17, 20, and 13 of MCOCA and UAPA were dropped from the four accused including Sadhvi Pragya, Col, Ramesh Upadhyay, and Ajay Rahikar. After which he was booked under Section 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and other sections only. Shiv Narayan Kalsangra and Shyam Sahu were acquitted of all charges. All the accused in this case are out on bail and their bail period has been extended by the Special NIA Court.
When and Who checked
The case was initially investigated by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and it had registered a case against nine people. Later the task of the investigation was handed over to the CBI. The responsibility of the investigation was handed over to the NIA in 2011. A bench of Justice Naresh Patil and Justice NW Sambre of the Bombay High Court had again heard various petitions challenging the acquittal of nine persons.
The NIA had submitted a list of 286 witnesses and 216 different documents to the court. The charge of hatching a terrorist conspiracy was framed against the seven accused. For whose trial the court had postponed its hearing till November 12, 2018.