Mumbai 7/11 acquittals: 17 yrs ago, gaps in probe, question mark over identity of accused

Indian Express

3 days ago

The Bombay High Court acquittal of all the 12 accused in the July 11, 2006, serial Mumbai train blasts case comes 17 years after a Mumbai Police Crime Branch probe indicated loopholes in its investigation by the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS).
At a press conference on September 25, 2008, the Crime Branch announced it had busted a key Indian Mujahideen (IM) module and that it was responsible for several blasts since 2005 – including those in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi between 2006 and 2008, as well as the July 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts.
The ATS chargesheet had held the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) responsible for the blasts, arresting 13 people and chargesheeting 30, including 'Pakistani nationals'.
But as per the Crime Branch, four of the five IM men it arrested in 2008 were actually the absconding 'Pakistani nationals' mentioned in the 2006 blasts chargesheet filed by the ATS.
At the same time, the Crime Branch never claimed that those arrested for the train blasts by the ATS were innocent, or tried the IM men it had itself held for the Mumbai train blasts. The IM module the Crime Branch busted, led by Sadiq Israr Sheikh and including his associates, were, however, convicted for the July 26, 2008, Ahmedabad blasts and remain on trial in some other cases.
'How could the Crime Branch chargesheet them for a crime in which a sister agency had arrested a different set of accused? It was a job for that sister agency to do,' a Central security establishment officer told The Indian Express, adding he was not surprised by the court's acquittal of the 12 accused for the train blasts on Monday.
In its order, the High Court said: '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.'
At the press conference in September 2008, when it suggested that its findings regarding the 2006 blasts case differed from the ATS's, then Mumbai Crime Branch chief Rakesh Maria, accompanied by then Additional CP and current Mumbai Police chief Deven Bharti, said: 'The absconding Pakistani nationals mentioned in the 7/11 case as conspirators are actually the men we have arrested. They had not revealed their true identity during the (blasts) operation, and told their associates they were Pakistani nationals. That's why when their associates were quizzed, they told investigators that those absconding were Pakistanis.'
The Crime Branch 'breakthrough' following the arrest of an alleged car thief, Afzal Usmani, by a team led by one of its inspectors, Arun Chavan. Usmani led Chavan's team to Sadiq Israr Sheikh, Arif Badruddin Sheikh, Mohammed Zakir Abdul Sheikh and Mohammed Ansar, who were then arrested.
The Crime Branch said that during interrogation, Sadiq, who headed the UP module of the IM, said it was he along with fellow IM operative Dr Shahnawaz and two others who had executed the July 2006 train blasts.
According to the Crime Branch investigation, also confirmed by Central agency sources to The Indian Express, Sadiq received a year's training in Pakistan in the use of sophisticated weapons and assembling bombs.
He, along with Shahnawaz, who allegedly also received training in Pakistan, later rented a room in the Sewri area of Mumbai. 'They had been supplied with explosives from across the border. In that Sewri room, Sadiq and Shanawaz assembled bombs in pressure cookers. To avoid suspicion, the four pressure cookers in which bombs were assembled were all bought at different periods of time. Before the blasts, they conducted elaborate recces travelling in first-class compartment of Mumbai locals every day to study the feasibility of their plan. On the day of the blasts, they all boarded Mumbai locals at different times and got down at different stations,' an officer who was part of the investigations told The Indian Express.
According to the officer, during interrogation, Sadiq even expressed anger and sadness at the arrest of Ehtesham Siddiqui, one of the 2006 train blasts accused, and others. 'He told the probe team categorically that the ATS had the wrong people and that they had nothing to do with the blasts. He even said that it was because of (the 2006 train blasts) case that the IM began sending emails claiming responsibility for the terror attacks they executed later,' the officer said.
In fact, until the 2008 arrest of the IM module by the Mumbai Crime Branch, the organisation had been a shadowy entity — so much so that even Central agencies such as the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing) had no clue about what it really was.
The chance discovery was made after Maria roped in Inspector Arun Chavan (now retired) following the serial blasts in Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008, to look into the finding that the cars used for it had been stolen from Navi Mumbai.
Chavan, with the help of Constable Pralhad Madne (an expert in car theft cases), managed to catch the two men who had allegedly stolen the vehicles within a month. The two reportedly told Chavan they stole the cars on the instructions of Afzal Usmani. Chavan's team nabbed Usmani from UP's Mau district on August 24 that year.
'Until then, for all practical purposes, we were groping in the dark… If it was not for that inspector from the Mumbai Crime Branch, we would not have known what the IM was really,' a former IB official, who later tracked the new outfit and is now retired, told The Indian Express.
'In fact, in the four years before the Ahmedabad blasts, when a series of blasts were taking place in different parts of the country, we were chasing Pakistan-backed operative Shahid Bilal. Until then, we believed that the IM was just another name for the LeT (Lashkar-e-Toiba), and that Bilal had perpetrated the blasts. This was the information that even R&AW had at that time. But we learnt later that Bilal had already died in Pakistan by then,' the retired official said.