Mumbai: Former Chief Justice of Orrisa High Court and Senior Advocate Dr S Muralidhar on Tuesday told the Bombay High Court that the trial court has wrongly convicted two accused in the Mumbai 7/11 train blasts case.
Concluding his two-day arguments on behalf of the two life convicts, he said ''without any evidence these innocent persons were arrested and MCOCA was invoked only to get the confessional statements extracted from them and based upon them they were wrongly convicted''.
Arguing before a special bench of Justice Anil Kilor and Justice Shyam Chandak, which has been hearing the convicts' appeals for more than five months now, Dr Muralidhar said that under designated MCOCA, these confessional statements aren't admissible as evidence since the officer has failed to identify the persons, whose confessional statements, he recorded and the same have absence of 'voluntariness' which is a requisite mandate.
This is a very serious legal flaw of the trial court. Thus, this Court should now discard these statements. As per the law, when recording such confessional statements, there should be no one present in the room except the accused and the officer who is recording the same. This is to ensure there is no influence or pressure on the accused. In this case, a senior officer recorded the statement but failed to adhere to the rules," the former CJ said.
He said that some of the officers have testified that till MCOCA was invoked there was no material to charge the accused persons with the stringent charge. Suddenly after MCOCA was invoked, everyone of the accused agreed to give their confessional statements, but prior to that none came ahead with any kind of confession. The Trial Court should have questioned this issue but nothing was done.
The Senior Counsel also highlighted the lapses in investigation and also the trial, the lapses on part of the investigating officers in obtaining confessional statements of the accused in the case and also about the media trial and conduct of the courts in such terrorism or high profile cases.
Contending that the 12 men are behind the bars for the last 18 years without any proper evidence, Dr Muralidhar argued that so many lives have been already lost in those blasts, which ripped through Mumbai's Western Railway's Local Line, and then these "innocents were arrested."
"And then after years, the accused are acquitted and then no one gets closure. We have a history of failures in probes in terror cases. But it is not too late now. The court can set it right," the senior counsel submitted.
The former Chief Justice urged the judges to consider the 'stigma' factor that not only hits the accused but also his family and relatives. "It is not just the accused but even his children, parents, relatives get tainted.
And once tainted, Milords, this society is too cruel to them. No one will treat them properly. Please consider this factor too," he submitted.
Meanwhile Sr Advocate S . Nagamuthu former Judge of Kerala High Court will submit his arguments on Wednesday for another convict Faisal Shaikh who has been awarded death penalty by the special court.
