Malegaon blast case: NIA court acquits all seven accused, including Pragya Singh Thakur
The trial in the case, which started in 2018, got over on April 19, 2025, and the case was reserved for judgement.
Announcing the verdict on Thursday, the NIA court said the prosecution proved that a blast occurred in Malegaon, but failed to prove that a bomb was placed in a motorcycle.
Moreover, the court observed that the "prosecution failed to prove that the bike on which the bomb was allegedly strapped belonged to Sadhvi Pragya," according to the Bar and Bench.
The court acquited the seven accused, reportedly saying:
There is no evidence of storing or assembling the explosives in Shrikant Prasad Purohit's residence. No sketch of the spot was done by the investigation officer while doing the panchnama. No fingerprint, dump data or anything else was collected for the spot. The samples were contaminated, so the reports can't be conclusive and are not reliable. The bike allegedly involved in the blast did not have a clear chassis number.
The court also concluded that the injured people were not 101 but 95 only, and there was manipulation in some medical certificates.
The seven accused included:
BJP leader and former MP Pragya Thakur Lt Col Prasad Purohit Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyay Ajay Rahirkar Sudhakar Dwivedi Sudhakar Chaturvedi Sameer Kulkarni
These accused were acquitted by the special NIA court after almost 17 years after the blast ripped throguh Maharashtra's communally sensitive Malegaon town. According to PTI, as many as six persons were killed and more than 100 were left injured.
It was reported that an explosive device, strapped to a motorcycle, went off near a mosque in the town, located about 200 km from Mumbai, on September 29, 2008.
The blast took place during the holy month of Ramzan, just before the Navratri festival, the NIA had pointed out, claiming the intention of the accused was to strike terror in a section of the Muslim community.
The court had framed charges against the seven accused.
The charges comprised UAPA sections 16 (committing terrorist act) and 18 (conspiring to commit terrorist act) and various IPC sections, including 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 153 (a) (promoting enmity between two religious groups).
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