Latest news with #RDX
NDTV
4 hours ago
- Politics
- NDTV
"Mistake...": Maharashtra Goes To Top Court Against Train Blasts Acquittals
The Maharashtra government has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court challenging yesterday's Bombay High Court's decision to acquit 12 persons who were accused in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts. The plea was mentioned on Tuesday before a bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai by Solicitor General of India (SGI) Tushar Mehta, who requested that the plea be taken up urgently by the top court. The Court listed the matter for hearing on Thursday. Nineteen years after seven train blasts that killed more than 180 persons, the high court on Monday acquitted all the 12 accused, saying the prosecution utterly failed to prove the case and it was "hard to believe the accused committed the crime". The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), said the high court, failed to prove the offences beyond a reasonable doubt. The high court set aside a September 2015 judgment of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) court that had imposed the death penalty on 5 of the 12 accused persons and had sentenced the remaining 7 to life. In its damning indictment of the prosecution's case, the high court declared all confessional statements of the accused as inadmissible and suggested "copying". The Maharashtra government argued in its petition that the high court has recorded a "very peculiar observation in disbelieving the confession" of the fifth accused. The government has called it a mistake to not trust the important evidence on the recovery of RDX and detonator. "The High Court has disbelieved the recovery of 500 gms of RDX from Accused No 1on a hyper technical ground that the RDX which was seized was not sealed with a lac seal. It is worth noting that it was not sealed with Lac because RDX is a flammable high court has erred in disbelieving the recovery of RDX," said the government in its petition. Investigators said the bombs, made of RDX and ammonium nitrate, were placed inside pressure cookers and concealed in bags. The attacks were attributed to Pakistan-backed Islamic militants. The High Court, argued the state government, has committed a grave error in not accepting the arguments advanced by the trial court for sentencing the accused. "It has erred in acquitting the accused of all the charges including the UAPA," it said. The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) filed charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The prosecution relied heavily on confessions, alleged recoveries, and circumstantial evidence - none of which stood up under the high court's scrutiny. "It is necessary to see that the accused were continuously engaged in activities prohibited by law, which are cognizable offences punishable with imprisonment for 3 years or more and in respect of which more than one charge sheet has to be filed in the competent court within the preceding period of 10 years and which have been tried by the competent court cognizance should have been taken," it said. Former Mumbai police commissioner A N Roy today expressed shock over the high court's acquittal of all 12 accused in the case, saying the probe into the case was conducted by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in a professional manner where evidence was collected "honestly and truthfully". On the evening of July 11, 2006, bomb blasts took place at seven different places in the Mumbai local trains within just 11 minutes. In this incident, 189 people died, while more than 827 passengers were injured. The bombs were placed in first-class compartments of trains from Churchgate. They exploded near the stations of Matunga Road, Mahim Junction, Bandra, Khar, Jogeshwari, Bhayandar, and Borivali. A trial court in 2015 convicted 12 people in the blasts' case.
Hindustan Times
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
19 years on, HC acquits all 12 men in 7/11 train blasts case
MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted all the 12 accused--including 5 men on death row—who had been convicted by a special MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) court for planning and orchestrating the July 11, 2006 serial blasts on Mumbai suburban rail network. These men, now acquitted, have spent 19 years in prison. One of them died while awaiting his appeal. Sajid Ansari, one of the men acquitted, is currently out on parole. He is seen here in his Mira Road home, against the mountain of documents that helped him fight his case. (photo by Raju Shinde) (Raju Shinde) The serial train blasts were one of the deadliest terror attacks in India. They killed 188 people and left 829 injured. These seven blasts, spread over six minutes of evening rush hour, were so powerful that they ripped through the double layered thick steel roofs and sides of each of the seven compartments. But the investigations into this deadly attack, led by the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), was so hurried and shoddy that a division bench of justices Anil S. Kilor and Shyam C. Chandak observed on Monday: '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.' While acquitting all the 13 accused they added that the prosecution had, 'utterly failed to establish the offence beyond the reasonable doubt against the accused on each count,' and that it was unsafe to base the convictions on evidence adduced by the prosecution. A total of 13 men were arrested by the Maharashtra ATS headed by IPS officer KP Raghuvanshi within four months of the blasts. The agency claimed that the blasts were the handiwork of some former members of the proscribed Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) with support from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Pakistan. The agency further claimed that LeT commander Azam Cheema had trained some of the arrested accused to handle arms and explosives and had also provided RDX for the attack. But a closer scrutiny of the case by the High Court revealed a trail of cut-paste confessions, unreliable witness narratives, material evidence handled without care and vital call data records hastily destroyed--a case study in shoddy investigation. Briefly, this is what the ATS claimed: Twelve Pakistani bomb-making experts illegally entered India with RDX-- six from Indo-Bangla border, four from the Rajasthan border and two from India-Nepal border—and come to Mumbai to assemble the bombs at the Chembur house of one of the accused, Mohammed Faisal Shaikh. However, this claim of the Pakistani infiltrators was based on the confessional statement of the accused and no antecedents of the infiltrators were established. A dossier by Maharashtra government on the Pakistanis was never made public and neither was it given to the accused when they sought access to it under the Right To Information. In its chargesheet against the 13 Indians it arrested, the ATS relied on the confessional statements of 11 of the accused. It later turned out that most of the confessions were a cut-copy-paste job. On 2015, the special MCOCA trial court acquitted one man, a school teacher Abdul Wahid Shaikh, one of the two men who had refused to confess, and convicted the remaining 12. Five of them were awarded the death penalty. The convicted men challenged their conviction and sentence. The Bombay High Court heard these appeals together with reference for confirmation of the death sentence handed down to the five convicts. Justice S Nagamuthu, retired judge of the Madras High Court, former Delhi High Court Justice Dr S. Murlidhar, senior advocates Nitya Ramakrishnan and Yug Mohit Chaudhry argued their cases, successfully pointing out the loopholes in the prosecution's case. The prosecution case was based mainly on eyewitness accounts, recoveries made by the ATS at the behest of the arrested accused, and confessional statements of the 11 accused which were recorded between October 4 and 25, 2006. The police had relied on accounts of two taxi drivers who claimed to have ferried two of the accused to Churchgate railway stations on July 11, 2006, and some passengers who claimed to have seen some of these accused while they were planting the bombs on the trains. The High Court on Monday refused to accept their evidence because their police statements were recorded 100 days after the blasts, and they identified the accused they claimed to have seen four years after the blasts. The division bench held the witnesses had no reason and occasion to remember faces of the accused persons amid a crowd after such a long gap. The court drew adverse inference from the fact that the ATS did not examine some other witnesses whose police statements were recorded immediately after the blasts and also rejected the evidence of the test identification parade, holding that the special executive officer who conducted the TIP, lacked the authority to do so. The bench also refused to accept the evidence of recovery of RDX, granules, detonators, cooker, printed circuit boards, soldering gun, books, maps, etc. from the accused persons after noticing that the articles were not properly sealed after their seizure until they were sent for examination to the forensic science laboratories, and therefore, the corroborative evidence could not be taken into consideration. As regards the confessional statements, the bench noted that portions of the statements were cut-copy-paste and the documents did not seem to be prepared by the concerned authorities, raising doubts over the compliance of procedural safeguards and norms to be followed. The court also refused to accept the genuineness of the confessions, holding that the accused had succeeded in proving that they were tortured in ATS custody for giving confessions and the fact that they had retracted the confessions before the trial court. The court also refused to rely on the confessional statements recorded under provisions of the MCOCA due to serious doubts over applicability of certain condition required under the Act. Additionally, the court questioned the investigators for not giving the accused an opportunity to consult their lawyers on record before their confessions were recorded. 'When their confessions were recorded, all the accused were represented by lawyers on record, but at the crucial stage of recording confession, the accused were not made aware of their right to consult their lawyers, thus violating their fundamental rights,' the court observed. CDR, a vital piece of evidence destroyed In order to prove the charge of conspiracy, the prosecution had relied on the Call Detail Records (CDR) of all the accused to point out that they were in touch with the LeT operatives based in Pakistan, but later the prosecution changed its stand and chose not to rely on the CDRs. However, when the accused persons tried to use the same CDRs to prove their innocence, the police claimed that they had destroyed the material collected since they were not relying on them any longer. The judges said that the CDRs of the accused could have proved the connection of the accused with the LeT and the planning of the blasts. 'The prosecution stated that the CDRs were destroyed which raises serious doubts over the integrity of the investigation conducted by the agency, and amounts to a grave violation of the right to a fair trial,' the bench stated. The ATS said they would consult the special public prosecutor Raja Thakre on the future course of action after studying Monday's judgment.
News18
20 hours ago
- Politics
- News18
ISKCON Temple In Mumbai's Girgaon Receives Bomb Threat Email
The threat email, sent from an unknown ID, claimed that five IED bombs loaded with RDX would detonate within 16 hours unless the Tamil Nadu government implemented the recommendations of Benai Das.
Indian Express
a day ago
- Indian Express
How Mumbai train blasts case fell: Court flags torture signs, identical statements, dodgy witnesses
The veracity of 'identical confessions' by 11 accused made to the police; allegations of custodial torture before confessions were made; and the lack of any reliable material for the state to grant 'prior approval' to invoke the stringent anti-terror laws — a combination of these factors were behind the Bombay High Court's acquittal Monday of the 12 accused in the 2006 Mumbai blasts case. To illustrate the discrepancies in the prosecution, the court flagged statements by two prosecution witnesses, Deputy Commissioners of Police Brijesh Singh and D M Phadtare, recorded on two different dates, at different places and time. 'By any stretch of imagination, it is highly impossible to have (the) same questions, and its sequence in both the statements with same answers. Thus, it speaks volume and create(s) doubt about the genuineness of the procedure followed while recording confessional statements of these accused,' the Court said. Essentially, the Court accepted the arguments made by the defence that raised questions about the 'genuineness' of the confessions. While different DCPs recorded the confessions, evidence showed that the questions asked, answers provided and even the ellipsis in the statements were identical. 'Even if, for a moment, it is presumed that a format of questions were used by them for convenience, it cannot be ignored that the answers…are identical verbatim, which is highly improbable, if not copied or a format was provided,' the Court held. Significantly, the Court reproduced 'handwritten' statements by each of the accused who said that they had signed confessional statements under duress by the agencies. These notes contain serious allegations of custodial torture. The Court, apart from looking at medical evidence, noted the timeline of the confessions to hold that doubts are cast on the confessions. The court perused medical evidence of doctors of KEM Hospital and Bhabha Hospital and noted that it 'sufficiently hinted at the possibility of torture' being inflicted on the accused to extort a confession. '…while seeking remand of the accused, it was the consistent case of the prosecution that the accused are not co-operating. However, immediately after invocation of the provisions of the MCOCA on 24/09/2006, the first confessional statement was recorded on 04/10/2006 and then there was a series of such statements which continued till 25/10/2006,' the Court noted. Under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, confessional statements made to the police are admissible as evidence. This is a departure from ordinary criminal law where only statements made in judicial custody have evidentiary value. The Court closely examined each confession to find glaring gaps in the answers on the events of the crime. For example, accused number 6, Shaikh Mohd. Ali Alam Shaikh did not disclose as to whether the whole 15 kg RDX substance was used, or some quantity was left over. And if it was left over, who had taken the remaining RDX and where was it kept, although he confessed to RDX being brought to his house. MCOCA also requires 'prior sanction' by a competent authority, a police officer not below the rank of the Deputy Inspector General of Police, before the law is invoked in a case. This procedure is an essential safeguard against the misuse of the law that reverses the burden of proof, allows prolonged detention and relaxes evidentiary standards. The court noted that the sanction was obtained based on a '2.5 pages long proposal' with no supporting documents. '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 said. Discarding the Test Identification Parade (TIP) of the accused, the court noted that the Special Executive Officer (SEO) who conducted it did not have the authority to do so. The court noted that the prosecution examined eight witnesses, including taxi drivers who drove the accused to Churchgate station; witnesses who saw the accused planting bombs in trains; witnesses to the assembly of bombs, and witnesses to the conspiracy. About the taxi drivers, the court said they were silent for over 100 days after the incident, and gave their statement to the police only on November 3, 2006, that two of the accused had travelled in their taxis. It observed that there was no special reason to trigger their memory about the faces and description of the accused, to enable their identification after such a long gap. Similarly, the court flagged the long gap in the case of witnesses who claimed to have seen the accused planting the bombs in the trains. The court noted that while one of the witnesses said that he saw the accused and some more persons making bombs when he entered the house of one of the accused, he changed his version during cross examination, saying he did not enter the house, but a friend who accompanied him told him about the bombs. 'Thus, since the defence succeeded in shattering his oral evidence in cross-examination, for this reason and other reasons recorded, we have not considered his evidence worth relying,' the HC noted. On the version of a person who claimed to be a witness to the conspiracy, the bench noted that while he said the accused were discussing some issues in secret meetings, he was unaware of the subjects discussed. On the statement of the witness who helped to draw sketches of the accused, the HC noted that he was not called for the trial and was not asked to identify the accused in the court. On evidence related to recoveries of explosives, including RDX granules, detonators, cookers, circuit boards, hooks, maps, etc, the HC noted that 'evidentiary value of these recoveries does not attach any importance on the ground that the prosecution failed to establish and prove the proper custody and proper sealing which ought to be intact till the articles were taken to Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL).' The judges observed that circuit boards recovered from two accused were of 'no help to the prosecution to establish as the prosecution failed to bring any evidence on record and to establish the type of bombs used in the present case'. Apurva Vishwanath is the National Legal Editor of The Indian Express in New Delhi. She graduated with a B.A., LL. B (Hons) from Dr Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow. She joined the newspaper in 2019 and in her current role, oversees the newspapers coverage of legal issues. She also closely tracks judicial appointments. Prior to her role at the Indian Express, she has worked with ThePrint and Mint. ... Read More
Time of India
a day ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Nikam: State must move SC against acquittal of accused
Kolhapur: Newly appointed Rajya Sabha member and special prosecutor for the 1993 Mumbai blasts Ujjwal Nikam on Monday urged state govt to immediately appeal to the SC regarding the acquittal of 11 surviving accused in the 2006 Mumbai serial blasts case. Speaking to the reporters in Solapur, where he was presenting a murder case before the sessions court, Nikam said, "The acquittal by the Bombay high court is a matter of study as to whether the law was misread or wrong evidence was collected." It should be noted that Nikam was not involved in the prosecution of the 2006 blasts. A Mumbai sessions court had initially convicted the accused, but the high court later overturned this decision on appeal. Nikam also went on to highlight similarities between the two major incidents. "In the 1993 blasts, RDX was used. Similarly, in the 2006 blasts, RDX was used again," he said. "Prima facie, it appears that Mumbai's sessions court pronounced the conviction based on the confession recorded by the accused under the Prevention of Terrorist Activities (POTA) Act, but the high court has found the same confessions not reliable," he added. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like American Investor Warren Buffett Recommends: 5 Books For Turning Your Life Around Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo Nikam suggested that now there is an urgent need to seek a stay on the acquittal by approaching the SC. "Many innocent lives were lost in the serial blasts. The HC not trusting the evidence is a serious concern. The govt, after studying the order, must immediately appeal before the SC," he said.
