Purohit refused urgent hearing
Former Army officer Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts, was on Friday refused an urgent hearing for bail by the Supreme Court after the Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur arrested with him as members of the right-wing Abhinav Bharat but not to him.
The Bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justices D Y Chandrachud and S K Kaul told his lawyer that his petition would come up in the regular course. The lawyer tried to plead that Purohit was lying in judicial custody for the past eight years for the duty he was performing as part of a covert operation by the Military Intelligence (MI).
Six persons were killed and another 100 injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle had exploded in Malegaon town of Maharashtra's Nashik district on September 29, 2008. Purohit, who is lodged in Taloja Jail in Maharashtra, was a serving officer at the time of his arrest, shortly after the blast.
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to Sadhvi Pragya, now on wheelchair and having cancer treatment in a Madhya Pradesh hospital as no prim facie case was made out against her, while denying it to Purohit on the ground that the charges cited by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against him were of grave nature.
The High Court had refused to accept Purohit's contention that he was part of an intelligence operation against Abhinav Bharat and he had nothing to do with the outfit as the NIA insisted that he had allegedly taken active part in the conspiracy meetings and even agreed to arrange explosives to be used in the blast.