Latest news with #MaharashtraAnti-TerrorismSquad
NDTV
6 hours ago
- NDTV
'Encounter Cop' Daya Nayak Promoted To Assistant Commissioner Rank
Mumbai: Senior police inspector Daya Nayak, once known as an `encounter specialist', was on Tuesday promoted to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police, an official said. Senior inspectors Jivan Kharat, Deepak Dalvi and Pandurang Pawar too were promoted as ACP by the order of the Maharashtra home department, he said. Nayak, who joined Mumbai Police in 1995 and is currently posted at the Bandra unit of the crime branch, rose to fame in the 1990s as one of the police officers who gunned down a number of gangsters in `encounters'. A film was also made on him. In 2006, the anti-corruption bureau registered a disproportionate assets case against him, but he was later given a clean chit. Nayak also served in the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and was part of the team which solved the case of the Ambani residence security scare and subsequent murder of Thane businessman Mansukh Hiren in 2021.
Indian Express
11 hours ago
- Indian Express
Malegaon verdict on July 31: Recalling the 2008 bombing and the case against the accused
On Thursday (July 31), a special court in Mumbai will pronounce its verdict on the 2008 Malegaon blast case, in which former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit are among the accused. In one of the country's longest-running terror cases, seven accused have been on trial on charges including murder and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), and the anti-terrorism law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA). Ahead of the judgment, this is a recall of what happened in Malegaon, and the major milestones in the 17-year journey of the case. The blast on September 29, 2008 A bomb went off at a chowk in Malegaon, a town known for its powerloom industry, about 100 km northeast of Nashik in Maharashtra. It was Ramzan, the holy month of fasting in Islam, and the blast, which took place in an area with a large Muslim population, killed six people and injured 100. The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which took over the investigation from the local police, suspected that the improvised explosive device (IED) had been planted on an LML Freedom motorcycle. It was suspected that the conspirators had consciously chosen the month of Ramzan and the eve of Navaratri to carry out the bombing, intending to cause communal rifts and endanger the internal security of the state. The ATS claimed that the registration number of the motorcycle that was found at the site of the explosion – MH-15-P-4572 – was fake, and that its engine number and chassis number had been erased. The motorcycle was sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Nashik for restoration of the erased numbers. The ATS alleged that the owner of the bike was Pragya Singh Thakur alias Sadhwi Poornachetanand Giri, and arrested her on October 23, 2008. Thakur's arrest and interrogation, the ATS claimed, led it to the other accused. The agency said that it had intercepted phone calls of suspected persons. Calls between Lt Col Purohit and retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay were under scrutiny. Upadhyay and Sameer Kulkarni were arrested on October 28. By November 14, 2008, a total of 11 persons had been arrested. Among them was Purohit, who was arrested from the premises of the Army in Colaba in South Mumbai. The accused claimed that they were illegally detained by the ATS before being produced in court, and that they had been tortured in custody. In November 2008, the ATS invoked stringent sections of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA) against them. They were accused of having formed an organisation named Abhinav Bharat, which was an organised crime syndicate. In its chargesheet filed on January 20, 2009, the ATS named the 11 arrested persons as accused, and another three as wanted accused. The accused were charged under the IPC and UAPA. The ATS claimed that the accused had discussed targeting Muslims as revenge against terrorist acts by Muslim men. It was also alleged that the accused had discussed working towards 'Aryawart' or a Hindu rashtra with its own Constitution and flag, and a 'government in exile'. According to the ATS, the conspiracy had begun from January 2008, and meetings were held at a number of places including Faridabad, Bhopal, and Nashik. The ATS claimed that Thakur had promised to provide people to carry out the bombing, and funds were raised through Abhinav Bharat. RDX, the plastic explosive used in the IED, was procured by Purohit from his posting in Jammu and Kashmir, and the bomb was assembled at the house of the arrested accused Sudhakar Chaturvedi, the ATS claimed. It was alleged that the explosive device was fitted on the motorcycle by Chaturvedi and another accused, Ramchandra Kalsangra, after which the vehicle was parked at the spot. NIA finds gaps in ATS investigation In 2011, the case was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the federal investigation agency that was set up after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Even as the NIA continued with its investigation, the accused approached courts challenging the invocation of MCOCA against them, under which their confessions were recorded. In its chargesheet filed on May 13, 2016, the NIA dropped the charges under MCOCA, saying that the manner in which the organised crime law was invoked by the ATS was 'questionable'. The ATS probe, it said, was filled with 'lacunae', and of the 11 individuals arrested by the agency, evidence existed against only seven, and against the two wanted accused, Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange. The NIA said that the motorcycle registered in Thakur's name had been in the possession of Kalsangra, who was using it well before the blast. It also said that since MCOCA was not applied, confessions made under the Act, including a statement where it was claimed that Thakur had asked a co-accused to call Purohit to arrange for explosives, were inadmissible as evidence. Most of the ATS's case against the accused relied on confessions, and the NIA said that the confession of Chaturvedi was an 'outcome of torture'. It also said that due to the passage of time, no additional evidence could be recovered from the spot. The NIA re-recorded the statements of some witnesses before magistrates, citing inconsistencies in the ATS probe. Witnesses who the ATS had claimed were present in meetings in Bhopal and Faridabad where discussions on revenge and the blast were allegedly held, told the NIA that they were not present at these purported meetings, and did not hear any such talk. One of the main allegations in the NIA chargesheet was that the ATS had created false evidence to implicate the accused, and had illegally entered the house of Chatuvedi in Deolali, as was noticed by two Army officers. What court said on Thakur, Purohit, others Despite the NIA's pitch to drop Thakur as an accused, the special court hearing the case said there was prima facie evidence to put her on trial. Even though the NIA chargesheet claimed there was no witness or other proof to show her involvement in the conspiracy, the court said that it was difficult to accept Thakur's claim that she had no connection with the blast. On Purohit, a military intelligence officer, the court said that a conclusion could not be drawn that he had participated in the alleged conspiracy meetings ahead of the blast in the discharge of his duty and with the permission of his superiors, as he had claimed. On December 27, 2017, the court accepted the NIA's contention that MCOCA cannot be invoked in the case. It said that the seven accused – Thakur, Purohit, retired Major Upadhyay, Kulkarni, Chaturvedi, Ajay Rahirkar, and Sudhakar Dwivedi – would face trial under UAPA, IPC, and the Explosive Substances Act, 1908. The court also said that two other accused, Rakesh Dhawde and Jagdish Mhatre, would face trial only under the Arms Act, 1959, in Pune, and three others would be discharged for lack of evidence, as proposed by the NIA. How the trial of the accused progressed The trial began in December 2018. The ATS, the previous probe agency, did not have a say in the proceedings, but the prosecution relied on documents and evidence collected by both the ATS and the NIA during the trial. More than 30 witnesses who were cited in the chargesheet passed away before they could depose before the court. The prosecution examined 323 witnesses and cited technical evidence including Call Data Records and voice samples. Thirty-four of the witnesses turned hostile. The testimonies of these witnesses mainly related to Purohit and the alleged conspiracy meetings. These witnesses denied having participated in or heard any discussions by the accused about the conspiracy to carry out a bomb blast. Some of the accused also alleged that they had been coerced, illegally detained, and threatened by the ATS into giving false statements naming certain persons. In its final arguments, the prosecution submitted that there was evidence in respect of Call Data Records, and forensic evidence to show that the explosive device had been planted in the LML motorcycle. There was also evidence to show the presence of the accused at the places where the conspiracy meetings had taken place, and other documentary proof. The accused claimed that with witnesses turning hostile, the conspiracy was not proven at all. The accused also claimed that a mob of 15,000 had 'manipulated' the crime scene. Police officials deposed that a mob, angry about the attack, had gathered and stones were thrown at the police. Lawyers for the accused claimed that the mob was 'motivated', and had 'attempted to screen the real culprit'.
Hindustan Times
12 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Mumbai ‘encounter specialist' cop Daya Nayak promoted to ACP rank
Senior police inspector Daya Nayak, once known as an `encounter specialist', was on Tuesday promoted to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police, an official said. 'Encounter specialist' Daya Nayak(X/@bandranews_com) Senior inspectors Jivan Kharat, Deepak Dalvi and Pandurang Pawar too were promoted as ACP by the order of the Maharashtra home department, he said. Nayak, who joined Mumbai Police in 1995 and is currently posted at the Bandra unit of the crime branch, rose to fame in the 1990s as one of the police officers who gunned down a number of gangsters in `encounters'. A film was also made on him. In 2006, the anti-corruption bureau registered a disproportionate assets case against him, but he was later given a clean chit. Nayak also served in the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and was part of the team which solved the case of the Ambani residence security scare and subsequent murder of Thane businessman Mansukh Hiren in 2021.
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
The end of an error
The Bombay High Court acquitted all 12 accused in the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts case from 2006, when bombs ripped through the Western Suburban Railway, killing 189 people and injuring 800 others. A special bench of Justices Anil S Kilor and Shyam C Chandak observed that the prosecution 'utterly failed' to prove their case. Their convictions were quashed and set aside. More embarrassingly for the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, the court was scathing about the lapses in the investigation, noting, '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.' To put a time frame in perspective, one of the falsely accused in the Mumbai train blasts case was arrested when his daughter was six months old. He's been released when she's in college. Meanwhile, the actual perpetrators of this terrorist act roam free. The families of the victims must endure the frustration of being denied closure, yet again. This was a high-profile case with intense media scrutiny and public pressure. One naively believes the authorities would leave nothing to chance while zeroing in on the culprits. Which is what makes it so much more frightening that despite all that focussed attention, the wrong people were incarcerated. It sends shivers down one's spine to think how justice is arrived at in less important matters in India — and how many people may be languishing in jails for crimes they didn't commit. Some situations are too tragic to fully comprehend, but it's clear these men have been through a surreal, never-ending nightmare that's harder to process, because it's the state that's inflicted the damage. Their free-falling ordeal is eerily reminiscent of Franz Kafka's 1925 masterpiece The Trial, where a man stands accused of a crime he can't recollect and whose nature is never revealed to him. Unlike Kafka's ill-fated protagonist who's executed in an abandoned quarry, these men have survived, but it's not like life is going to be all peaches and cream going forward. Much like the terrorising bureaucracy in The Trial that wields absolute power over the condemned individual, these exonerated men have been dehumanised. Being marked in public memory means they'll be tested, over and over again. Labels like 'terrorist' are tough to shake off. Resurrecting an identity and career, catching up on the changes in the world in two decades, presents considerable challenges. Criminal justice failures capture our imaginations because they speak so profoundly to the human condition, to fundamental questions about punishment, ambition and ethics. Throughout history, in mythology and in reality, there have been people who couldn't get a fair trial. Think of Joseph in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New. Believers make sense of a bad hand by dividing the Universe into halves of heaven and hell. Contemplating karmic retribution and ancient Biblical proverbs, that declare a day of Judgment when an all-knowing God will prevail, is one way of finding solace in a confusingly unjust world. Then there are those who imagine the Universe has a third layer, earth, that contains elements of both, beauty and terror. Injustice is a recurring theme in philosophical inquiry and art-form. The beautifully executed The Shawshank Redemption (1994) explores what it takes to keep hope alive when faced with a murder rap. The iconic line, Get busy living or get busy dying reflects stoicism; when life is spiralling out of control, all we can do is control our reaction to it. There are no satisfying answers to why so many innocent people are tossed around by twists in destiny. It's a sobering thought that everybody's more vulnerable when a morally bankrupt government is in charge. The writer is director, Hutkay Films
The Print
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Print
Mumbai blasts acquittal must not set a precedent. It'll hurt both agencies and judiciary
The Mumbai train blasts case had been dismissed primarily on technical grounds, such as flawed identification of the accused by eyewitnesses and procedural irregularities in identification. The Bombay High Court also dismissed the evidence recovered from the accused, including RDX and other material like chemicals, books, maps, mobile phones, circuit boards, pressure cookers, Saudi currency, computer discs, cassettes, wires and other components like detonators. The material was found to have 'no evidentiary value' due to a complete failure to follow standard procedures. Ironically, the Bombay High Court chose to overlook important evidence only because 'standard procedures' were not followed. The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) Special Court had sentenced five of the accused to death and seven to life imprisonment in 2015. Ten years later, the Bombay High Court acquitted all 12 convicted in the case. The court heard depositions by over 142 witnesses, including personnel from the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and survivors of the bombing. It also studied voluminous reports before arriving at the verdict. Seven blasts ripped through Mumbai's crowded suburban railway network at peak hour on 11 July 2006, leaving 187 dead. The bombing also left hundreds maimed for life. Duty toward citizens The acquittal by the Bombay High Court exposes serious chinks in India's anti-terrorism armour. The Maharashtra government's appeal could lead to justice for the victims' families. On Thursday, the Supreme Court stayed the high court order since it could impact pending cases under MCOCA. However, the acquitted men are not required to return to prison. Both the investigation agencies and the courts have a duty towards the citizens. The motive, modus operandi, and the choice of the target must be thoroughly investigated. Terrorists often choose 'soft targets' with large crowds, ensuring greater damage and chaos. This also generates maximum media attention. Besides civilian and military targets, terrorists also target areas of economic importance like the stock market, banks, and industrial clusters. The attacks on the World Trade Centre, the London Underground, and the Taj Mahal Palace fall into this pattern. The choice may also depend on the demographic profile, aimed at targeting one particular community, triggering communal conflicts, and creating a schism in the social fabric. By targeting the busy train compartments, the terrorists' strategy in the Mumbai train blasts case was to draw maximum media attention and create a psychological impact. Also read: Pakistani accomplices, shootouts, sealed chargesheet—how the 7/11 blasts case fell apart Build a strong case What's unfortunate in the 2006 terror attack acquittals is how the court ruled the evidence presented by the Maharashtra ATS as unreliable, stating that the entire case was built on eyewitness accounts, recoveries of explosives, and confessional statements. Several other terror attack cases have been concluded by following these methods. So, it is surprising that the high court didn't find them worthy of legal scrutiny. At the same time, the court's observation on the shoddy handling of evidence should be taken note of, and the personnel responsible for this negligence should be penalised. Now that the Maharashtra government's challenge has led to a stay on the order, it should now see that the agencies build a foolproof case and put up a strong defence. Legal and procedural loopholes must not be allowed to frustrate its attempt to punish the culprits. It will be a huge blow to the country's anti-terrorism mechanism if this case becomes a precedent to decide other terror attack cases. Not only will it affect the morale of the agencies, but it will also hurt the judiciary's credibility. Seshadri Chari is the former editor of 'Organiser'. He tweets @seshadrichari. Views are personal. (Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
