Malegaon blast: bail granted to Major Upadhyay

Mumbai: After Supreme Court granted bail to prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to another prime accused Major Ramesh Upadhyay who had allegedly actively participated in the conspiratorial meetings of the blast. Granting the bail, the court directed him to furnish a surety of Rs 1 lakh and also not to leave Mumbai without the permission of the court. Major Upadhyay was arrested in November 2008 for his alleged involvement in the Malegaon blast case. Seven people were killed in a bomb blast on September 29, 2008, at Malegaon, a communally-sensitive textile town in Nasik district of north Maharashtra.

He was accused of conspiring with prime accused Lt Col Purohit to carry out the blasts. He was lodged at the Taloja Central Jail in Raigarh, Maharashtra. Following the Supreme Court's bail to Lt Col Purohit, the Bombay High Court has granted bail to Major Upadhyay on the basis of parity. In January, Major Upadhyay received special MCOCA's permission to contest the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Upadhyay had previously contested the 2012 election on the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha ticket from his hometown Bairia in Balia but lost.

The 4,000-page charge sheet had alleged that Malegaon was selected as the blast target because of a sizeable Muslim population there. It had named Sadhvi Pragnaya Singh Thakur, Lt Col Purohit and co-accused Swami Dayanand Pandey as the key conspirators. However, Thakur was last year given clean chit by the NIA. A special MCOCA court had earlier ruled that the ATS had wrongly applied this law against Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Lt Col Purohit and nine others. (UNI)