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The Hindu
an hour ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
‘Grave error': Why Bombay HC acquitted all 12 convicted in 2006 Mumbai train blasts
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.
India Today
3 hours ago
- Politics
- India Today
Al-Qaeda cell busted, 4 terror suspects arrested from 3 cities; had links to Pak
The Gujarat Police's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Wednesday arrested four terror suspects allegedly linked to the terror group Al-Qaeda. They were tasked with carrying out attacks at high-profile locations across between 20 and 25, the four terror suspects — who were reportedly assigned major targets — were arrested from Gujarat, Delhi, and Noida in Uttar two were caught in Gujarat, the rest were arrested in Delhi and Noida All four, identified as Mohd Fardeen, Sefullah Kureshi, Zeeshan Ali and Mohd Faiq, were connected to each other through a social media interrogation is underway. During the initial course of investigation, the authorities revealed that the accused had cross-border a UN report has revealed that Al-Qaeda is shaping its regional affliate to spread its terror operations in the Indian subcontinent, namely Jammu and Kashmir in India and the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh and 32nd report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the 1267 ISIL (Da'esh) and Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council, released this week, noted that 'one Member State assessed that Al-Qaeda is shaping AQIS (Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent) to spread its operations into neighbouring Bangladesh", Jammu and Kashmir and the Indian subcontinent, Al-Qaeda has approximately 200 fighters, with Osama Mehmood being the that Al-Qaeda's capability to conduct large-scale terror attacks remains reduced while its intent remains firm, the report said, 'The group uses Afghanistan as an ideological and logistical hub to mobilise and recruit new fighters while covertly rebuilding its external operations capability.'- EndsInputs from PTI
Time of India
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
UP man claims Chhangur Baba threatened to kill daughters to force him into converting to Islam
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel A man here has alleged that Chhangur Baba "brainwashed" him and then threatened to kill his two daughters in an attempt to force him into converting to Islam, police have alias Chhangur Baba, a resident of Balrampur, is accused of targeting people from several communities and even maintaining a rate list for conversions, officials said. He was arrested earlier this month by a team of the Anti-Terrorism Squad of the Uttar Pradesh Police Jyotirgmay Rai (35) claimed he was brainwashed by Chhangur Baba and then threatened to murder his two daughters in an attempt to compel him to convert to complaint to the Additional Director General of Police, Piyush Mordia, on Tuesday has prompted a probe. Bhadohi Superintendent of Police Abhimanyu Mangalik confirmed that an investigation was has claimed that he married a woman he knew as Ishita through an Arya Samaj ceremony, only to later discover that her name was Afreen and she was from a Muslim escalated when Afreen's family reportedly began pressuring Rai to convert to Islam after their second daughter was born in March 2024."Rai claims that Afreen left with their daughters for Lucknow in November 2024. When he followed them, he was allegedly threatened and subjected to brainwashing by Chhangur Baba. He has also claimed that he was asked to convert to Islam while his daughters were held at knifepoint," said the working in Lucknow from December 2024 to April 2025, Rai returned to Bhadohi without converting and filed a petition before the high court seeking his children's custody."A police team has been deployed to investigate the matter," said the superintendent of police.
Indian Express
14 hours ago
- Indian Express
Mumbai 7/11 blasts: How the prosecution's pressure cooker theory blew up in court
The prosecution in the July 11, 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts case had relied on a key finding in the Maharashtra police's investigation – that the bombs that ripped through the train coaches were packed in pressure cookers that the accused allegedly placed on the luggage racks. While acquitting the 12 accused on July 21, the Bombay High Court, however, raised doubts over the reliability of accounts of certain witnesses who claimed to have seen some of the accused placing 'black rexine bags' with the bomb-filled pressure cookers. Police claimed that during their investigation, one of the accused led them to a marshy location near the tracks on Mira Road from where they recovered 'a brown plastic bag in mud, containing several items, including 7 rubber gaskets, 5 whistles, broken electric wires…' They also seized a five-litre 'Kanchan' brand pressure cooker from the house of another accused, Faisal Ataur Rahman Sheikh. Further, an eye witness, shopkeeper Mohanlal Kumawat, claimed that 'some Kashmiri-looking persons purchased eight cookers' from him in May 2006. The police then went on to join these dots to allege that pressure cookers were used in the blasts. However, the court records that a forensic report indicated that the rubber gaskets and whistles recovered from the spot were 'duplicates, as they did not match the original products from the Kanchan company in terms of markings and physical characteristics'. The bench of Justices Anil S Kilor and Shyam C Chandak said that to examine the Anti-Terrorism Squad's theory, the court needed to ascertain the possible size of the bags allegedly containing the pressure cookers – and whether it would be big enough to attract the witnesses' attention. The court noted that the 'typical dimensions of a five-litre pressure cooker, irrespective of manufacturer, is approximately 41 centimetres in width and 20 cm in height (16.14 x 7.87 inches).' Comparing this to an A4-size sheet, the court said that the 'bag required to put a 5-litre cooker loaded with a bomb will be of a normal size and not an abnormal one that would attract anybody's attention, including that of Prosecution Witness, one Subhash Kamlakar Nagarsekar, and give cue for triggering memory.' The court also said that while the statement of shopkeeper Kumawat is 'relevant for the prosecution's story that the bombs were packed in cookers by the accused', he was not examined or called for Test Identification Parade (TIP). The court notes that five other witnesses who claimed to have seen the 'suspected passengers planting bombs' on the trains were also not examined or called for TIP. Instead, on November 2, 2006, over a 100 days after the blast, the ATS called taxi drivers Santosh Kedar Singh and Rajesh Satpute, who said they transported two accused Asif Khan Bashir Khan and Mohd. Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, respectively, to Churchgate station – a delay that the court took note of. The HC said that one of the taxi drivers 'did not give any special reason' for remembering the face of the accused even after about 100 days since 'there is hardly any chance for any taxi driver to have long interaction and to have sufficient and ample opportunity to notice and observe the passengers and their faces, unless there is some special reason.' The court went on to point out how in Mumbai, passengers and taxi drivers have minimal interaction and that 'there is no opportunity or practice of bargaining, as the fare is calculated strictly in accordance with the fare meter installed in the taxi'. The court notes that taxi driver Santosh Kedar Singh had during his cross-examination admitted that it was difficult to 'remember a passenger after a week and it becomes more difficult after a month.'
Hans India
2 days ago
- Politics
- Hans India
MyVoice: Views of our readers 22nd July 2025
Flawed criminal justice system stands exposed BombayHigh Court's acquittal of all 12 individuals on Monday in the 2006 Mumbai train blast case is a stark reminder of the deep flaws within our criminal justice system. After spending over a decade behind bars, some of whom are serving death sentences, these men have finally been declared innocent. But what does one say to someone who has lost 17 years of their life to a failed investigation and a trial built on weak, inconclusive evidence? This is not merely a story of justice delayed; it is a story of justice derailed. The High Court's observation that there was no credible evidence and that suspicion alone cannot convict is a damning indictment of our investigating agencies and prosecution. The role of the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which arrested these men and built the case against them, must come under immediate scrutiny. If these individuals were innocent, the real perpetrators of one of India's deadliest terror attacks remain unidentified and free. Innocent lives were caged, families were shattered, and public trust in our legal institutions weakened. The victims of the blasts have received neither closure nor truth. We must now demand accountability, not just for the wrongful confinement of these men, but also for the collective failure of our legal machinery. Justice is not served by imprisoning the innocent while the guilty roam free. A democracy must uphold justice with rigour, fairness, and most importantly, in time. Vishal Mayur,Tumakuru Mumbai cops have a lot to answer Ina significant judgment, the Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted all 12 men who were earlier convicted and sentenced to death (five of them) and life term (seven) for 'participating' in the deadly serial train blasts of July 11, 2006. Around seven bombs had exploded in different local trains on the western line of the Mumbai railways that killed 189 persons and left 820 seriously injured. The judgement came 19 years after the incident, while the men were left to languish in jail all these years. Only one Wahid Shaikh was acquitted in 2015 (after nine years in jail) after the trial court had not found any evidence against him. The police's case was that the accused had assembled bombs in a pressure cooker and had planted them on the train in the evening. The acquittal brings into focus not just the fact that 12 men had to languish in jail for close to two decades and Wahid for nine years, but also the fact that families of those killed in the attack still do not know who the perpetrators are. Now, the state police and the investigating agencies have a lot of answering to do. Bhagwan Thadani,Mumbai End of an era Thepassing of veteran leader and former Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan marks the end of an era in Indian politics. A stalwart of the Communist movement, Achuthanandan dedicated over seven decades to public life, rising from humble beginnings to become one of Kerala's most respected leaders. As Chief Minister from 2006 to 2011, he championed land reforms, anti-corruption drives, and pro-poor initiatives, earning admiration across party lines. Endowed with a rare blend of integrity and mass appeal, he was known for his simplicity, fearlessness, and unwavering commitment to the Leftist ideology. Even in his 90s, he remained active, voicing people's concerns with clarity and passion. His political journey, often marked by internal party struggles and principled stands, made him a symbol of resistance and clean governance. V S Achuthanandan leaves behind a legacy of honesty, public welfare, and relentless service—a legacy that will inspire generations to come. N Sadhasiva Reddy,Bengaluru VS leaves behind a lasting legacy Former Kerala chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan, an icon of the Communist movement, had a towering, if not fiery, presence in State politics for decades. As a crusading leader of the opposition, he was a standard-bearer for the underdogs and uphill public causes. Achuthanandan had withdrawn from public life after he suffered a minor stroke in 2019. His legacy will remain an inspiration for future politicians. Jayanthy S Maniam,Mumbai Keeping ED above politics TheSupreme Court cautioning the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against becoming a tool for political battles is both timely and commendable. Democracy thrives when institutions remain neutral and focus on their constitutional roles. The judiciary's reminder to fight political contests before the electorate reinforces people's faith in justice. Agencies like the ED must uphold credibility and avoid actions that appear partisan and influenced by leaders calling the shots. It is vital to strengthen checks and balances to ensure investigative bodies remain independent, foster public trust and prevent misuse for political vendettas. Dr Vijaykumar H K,Raichur
