HC quashes conviction & acquits all 12 accused in 2006 Mumbai train blasts case

Time of India

6 days ago

Mumbai: Severely indicting the prosecution for the case it had made out and the state anti-terror squad for its shoddy probe, the Bombay high court on Monday quashed the conviction of all 12 accused found guilty a decade ago for the July 11, 2006 synchronised Mumbai train blasts between Mahim and Borivli that left 187 dead and 824 injured.
The HC refused to confirm death sentences for five and life sentences given on Sept 30, 2015 to seven by the special court set up under the anti-organised crime Act and acquitted all, directing their immediate release.
Punishment for an actual criminal is essential to uphold the rule of law, but "creating a false appearance of having solved a case… gives a misleading sense of resolution. This deceptive closure undermines public trust and falsely reassures society, while in reality, the true threat remains at large.
Essentially, this is what the case at hand conveys," a special bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak observed in the introduction to their 671-page judgment, before shredding the prosecution case.
The identification parade was not conducted properly, witnesses identifying accused in dock after four years lacked credibility and MCOCA was invoked without application of mind, the HC said, discarding confession statements relied on for want of "trustworthiness and completeness."
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The HC also accepted defence arguments of torture of accused vitiating confessional statements.
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"The prosecution utterly failed to establish the offence beyond reasonable doubt against the accused on each count. It is unsafe to reach the satisfaction that the accused committed the offences for which they were convicted and sentenced," the bench held.
After over six months of hearing and going through more than 44,000 pages of record, Bombay HC concluded the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) had no case against the 12 accused in the 11/7 train blasts case.
Over two decades ago, bombs planted on first-class compartments exploded during the peak evening commute at seven locations on the Western Railway suburban network. They ripped metal and lives between Khar Road and Santacruz, Bandra and Khar Road, Jogeshwari and Mahim Junction, Mira Road and Bhayander, Matunga and Mahim Junction, and Borivli.
The prosecution case was of sophisticated explosive RDX being used, of accused being members of terror outfits like SIMI who received training in Pakistan, and of 15 wanted accused, mainly Pakistanis.
While the trial court's special MCOCA judge Y D Shinde in 2015 said special public prosecutor Raja Thakare had rightly described the accused as "merchants of death" and Thakare argued that the trial verdict could not be dislodged and the noose be confirmed, the HC noted the prosecution case had unravelled completely.
The HC also held that the prosecution failed to prove what kind of explosive was used. It said no importance can be attached to claims of recovery of RDX, circuit boards and detonators, as prosecution failed to prove custody chain before analysis.
The dozen men were in prison all along since their arrests in 2006. While one of them died in 2021, the 11 whose appeals were allowed joined on Monday via video-conferencing from prisons across the state, including Pune's Yerawada and prisons in Nashik, Amravati and Nagpur.
"Bahut bahut shukriya Sir," said a convict, in white prison uniform with a white topi, on video conference from Yerawada, when defence lawyer Yug Chaudhri, conveyed to them in Hindi that they all stood freed.
The HC, in a detailed analysis of the case and evidence on record, said while "prosecution has referred to Al-Qaeda Manual for many things, nothing is brought on record about it."
The prosecution case was that wanted accused Azam Cheema alias Babaji, a Pakistani national, and two of the accused given death sentence as planters had conspired since 1999 to wage war against the govt of India and were in touch with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Conspiracy meetings were held in Bandra and one accused brought six Pakistanis to Mumbai in 2006, ATS had said. HC wondered why no CDRs were brought on record. "The alleged connection of the accused with Azam Cheema and members of LeT could have been established with the help of CDRs," HC said.
The HC classified prosecution witnesses in four categories: for identification, eyewitnesses of bomb assembly, of conspiracy, and taxi drivers who allegedly ferried two planters.
The court discarded their testimonies as doubtful. For one who claimed to have been to a planter's (A3, an alleged 'jihadist') house where he allegedly saw a few Pakistanis whose names he recalled but did not know what the meeting was for, the HC, doubting his credibility, said that "at the same time, he could not recollect the name of a particular dancer, with whom he had a close relationship for over a month in the same year.
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Kamal Ansari, given death sentence by the trial judge, died in 2021. He too stood acquitted by HC. Apart from convicts' appeals, before the HC was the state's reference for death sentence confirmation, as required by law for capital punishment to become executable. Thakare and Avdhoot Chimalkar for the state argued the appeals were fit to be dismissed. The conviction relied primarily on the confessions of 11 accused under the stringent MCOCA Act to nail them.
Before HC, an alleged planter Naved Khan, from Nagpur prison, had said he suffered "needlessly for 19 years" and while lives were lost, innocents could not be hanged.