‘Grave error': Why Bombay HC acquitted all 12 convicted in 2006 Mumbai train blasts

The Hindu

7 days ago

The Bombay High Court on Monday (July 21, 2025) acquitted all 12 accused in the 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts case, overturning a 2015 verdict by a special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court that had sentenced five of them to death and seven to life imprisonment. A Division Bench of Justices Anil S. Kilor and Shyam C. Chandak delivered a scathing indictment of the Mumbai Police's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), remarking that it had created 'a false appearance of having solved a case.'
The judgment ordered the release of 11 men after 19 years of incarceration. One of the accused had died in custody in 2021 due to COVID-19. Only one among them, Wahid Shaikh, had been acquitted earlier by the trial court in 2015 after it found no evidence against him. He, too, had spent nine years in prison before being exonerated.
What is the case?
Nearly two decades ago, on July 11, 2006, Mumbai was shaken by a coordinated series of bomb blasts that left an indelible scar on the city's collective memory. Within a matter of minutes, seven explosions ripped through suburban trains on the Western Railway line during the peak evening rush hour, killing 189 people and seriously injuring 824. According to the Mumbai Police, the bombs had been assembled using pressure cookers and strategically planted to cause maximum devastation during the city's busiest commute hours. In the immediate aftermath, the Congress-led Maharashtra government handed over the investigation to the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). Eventually, 13 individuals were put on trial in connection with the blasts and 17 others, including Pakistani nationals, were named in the ATS chargesheet.
Why did the High Court set aside the convictions?
The prosecution's case rested primarily on eyewitness testimonies, the recovery of explosives, and confessional statements. However, the High Court found the evidence to be fundamentally compromised. It opined that the confessions were extracted through 'barbaric and inhuman' torture, the eyewitness accounts lacked credibility, and the recovered materials were 'vulnerable to tampering' and therefore inadmissible.
'Punishing the actual perpetrator of a crime is a concrete and essential step toward curbing criminal activities, upholding the rule of law, and ensuring the safety and security of citizens. But creating a false appearance of having solved a case by presenting that the accused have been brought to justice 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,' the Bench underscored in its 671-page judgement.
Here are some of the key findings:
Unreliable eyewitnesses
The prosecution's case relied heavily on eight eyewitnesses, including taxi drivers who allegedly ferried the accused and train passengers who claimed to have seen them planting the bombs. However, the court deemed this testimony 'unsafe,' citing significant delays and a lack of corroboration. Most witnesses approached the police over three months after the incident, casting doubt on the reliability of their recollections. The court was particularly critical of the two taxi drivers, who remained silent for nearly four months. It found it implausible that they could accurately recall the faces of passengers given the fleeting and routine nature of taxi rides in a metropolis like Mumbai. Similarly, a witness who had assisted in preparing sketches of the suspects was never brought to testify in the trial or asked to identify the accused in court.
A significant procedural lapse that further weakened the prosecution's case was the invalidity of the test identification parades. The special executive officer who conducted them, Shri Barve, lacked the legal authority, as his tenure had ended more than a year earlier. As a result, the identifications made during these parades, including that of three accused, were ruled inadmissible.
Coerced confessions
The High Court held that the confessional statements of 11 convicts were inadmissible, citing grave violations of statutory safeguards. Most notably, the Bench concluded that the confessions had been extracted through torture. The judgment detailed chilling allegations by the accused, who described being beaten with belts, having their legs forcibly stretched apart, subjected to electric shocks, and deprived of sleep. These accounts were corroborated by medical reports from King Edward Memorial and Bhabha hospitals.
The prosecution's case was further weakened by the striking similarity across the confessions, even though they were recorded by different officers at different times and locations. The statements were found to be 'verbatim', including the phrasing of questions, responses, and even grammatical errors, raising serious doubts about their voluntariness. The court also found that key procedural safeguards were ignored. The accused were not informed of their right to legal counsel before their statements were recorded, and there was neither certification of the language used nor any confirmation that the confessions were read back and acknowledged by them.
No 'prior sanction' under MCOCA
The High Court delivered a decisive blow to the prosecution by holding that the very invocation of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA), was unlawful. The statute requires 'prior sanction' by a competent authority, a police officer not below the rank of the Deputy Inspector General of Police, before it can be invoked in a case. This is a crucial safeguard since the stringent anti-terror law reverses the burden of proof, allows prolonged detention and dilutes evidentiary standards. The court found that the sanctioning officer had granted approval without examining the necessary documents, some of which were submitted only after the approval had been issued.
'Mere reproduction of some expressions, used in the definition of 'organised crime', 'continuing unlawful activities' or 'organised crime syndicate' to show the compliance, cannot be said to be in tune with the letter and spirit of the law relating to grant of approval for invocation of the provisions of the MCOCA,' the court underscored. The prosecution's failure to call the sanctioning officer as a witness further compounded the lapse. The court concluded that without his testimony, the approval for invoking MCOCA lacked legal validity.
Destruction of evidence
A key point of contention was the call detail records (CDRs) of the accused. Although the defence repeatedly sought access to them, the prosecution claimed the records had been destroyed. The court found this deeply troubling, noting that the CDRs were crucial for establishing the accused's whereabouts during alleged conspiracy meetings and for verifying or refuting claims of contact with operatives in Pakistan. It concluded that the destruction of such potentially exculpatory evidence appeared deliberate and amounted to the suppression of material facts. This, the court held, cast 'serious doubts over the integrity of the investigation' and constituted a 'grave violation of the right to a fair trial.'
The judges also found serious lapses in the handling of physical evidence allegedly recovered, such as RDX granules, detonators, pressure cookers, circuit boards, hooks, and maps. They pointed out that the prosecution's failure to maintain a clear chain of custody and ensure secure sealing before submission to the Forensic Science Laboratory severely compromised the evidentiary value of these items.
What happens next?
The Maharashtra government has already approached the Supreme Court challenging the High Court's verdict. The appeal is scheduled to be heard on July 24. Earlier, Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai briefly observed that staying a judgment of acquittal at the appellate stage is an option exercised only in the 'rarest of rare' cases. His oral remark came when a lawyer mentioned the State's petition before his Bench.