Mumbai: Seventeen years after a bomb blast rattled Malegaon, a Special Court of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) today acquitted all the seven accused including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and others who stood trial in the political sensitive terrorism case.
BJP leader and former MP Pragya Singh Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, Major Ramesh Upadhyay (retired), Ajay Rahirkar, Sameer Kulkarni, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi all stand acquitted.
Special Judge AK Lahoti, who presides over the NIA court, announced the acquittals.
“Terror has no religion because no religion can advocate violence,” the special NIA court judge, AK Lahoti, said.
Advocate Ranjit Nair said, “I was representing accused number 11 Sudhakar Chaturvedi. Court has acquitted him. The Court has observed that prosecution cannot present any proof against accused.”
Briefing the media, Advocate Prakash Salsingikar said, "The court has said that this incident is very bad. However, the loss of victims can't be fulfilled but the court has asked for compensation to all those people."
Significant security measures have been implemented around the Sessions Court in South Mumbai ahead of the ruling, with a heavy police presence deployed outside the courthouse complex.
The explosion on the night of September 29, 2008, near Bhikku Chowk in Malegaon, killed six people and injured over a hundred. A low-intensity bmb fitted to a motorcycle detonated near a busy intersection, triggering panic and chaos in the communally sensitive town.
Initially investigated by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), the case was taken over by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2011. The NIA re-registered the offence and conducted further investigations. Since then, multiple chargesheets and supplementary reports have been filed. The trial began in 2018 after charges were formally framed against seven accused.