Malegaon blast: Purohit, Thakur and 5 others charged
MUMBAI: A special court on Tuesday framed charges in the 2008 Malegaon blast case against Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Pragya Singh Thakur and five others under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC), setting the ball rolling for the beginning of the trial.
Judge Vinod Padalkar, presiding over the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court, framed charges against all seven accused for committing terror acts, conspiring to commit terrorist acts, criminal conspiracy and murder, among others. If convicted, the maximum punishment can be life imprisonment or death.
The court posted the case on November 2 for the trial to commence. Apart from Purohit and Thakur, the other accused are Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sameer Kulkarni.
On September 29, 2008, six people were killed and over 100 injured when an explosive device strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon in north Maharashtra.
The judge, while reading out the charges against the accused persons said: “The Abhinav Bharat organisation was formed with the common object to spread terrorism and a bomb with RDX was planted on a motorcycle in Malegaon that killed six persons and injured 101 others. The accused persons came together to hatch a conspiracy to commit a terrorist act and procured explosives to further their conspiracy.”
According to the prosecution, the accused persons had formed the right-wing group Abhinav Bharat and held meetings under
this group’s name at various places in the country, where the alleged conspiracy was hatched.
All the accused were present in the court when the judge read out the charges against them. They pleaded not guilty in the case. The accused were charged under sections 16 (committing terrorist act) and 18 (conspiring
to commit terrorist act) of the UAPA.
Under the IPC, they were charged under sections 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 153 (a) (promoting enmity between two religious groups).
The accused were also charged
under relevant sections of the Explosive Substances Act.
Purohit told the court that he never expected this and said, “No one can doubt my honesty, integrity and service record.”
Thakur told reporters that the investigating agency had given her a “clean chit” in the case.
WITH PTI INPUTS