Malegaon blast case: Plea in SC against bail to Sadhvi Pragya

A petition was filed on Thursday in the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court’s order granting bail to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case. The plea has sought a stay on the high court’s April 25 order granting bail to her. The high court had granted her the relief saying there was “no prima facie evidence against her”.

Petitioner Nisar Ahmed Haji Sayed Bilal, father of one of the blast victims, has alleged that Thakur was a “powerful person” and could influence the witnesses in the case.

“The high court failed to appreciate that Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur is an influential person and is likely to wield her power and influence in an illegal and unlawful manner to tamper with evidence and influence witnesses,” he has said in the petition.

The plea has claimed that there was ample evidence against her, and “her role, involvement and complicity in planning and executing the conspiracy for committing Malegaon blast is writ large on the case record”.

“Thakur coordinated with a co-accused for providing explosives to her confidantes/absconding accused,” it has said.

The petition has said that she had been denied bail by a special court in Mumbai several times in the years 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2016 on the ground that “a prima facie case is clearly made out against her”. Thakur was granted bail by the high court, which, however, had refused a similar relief to co-accused Lt Col Prasad Purohit.

Seven people were killed in a bomb blast on September 29, 2008, at Malegaon, a communally-sensitive textile town in Nasik district of north Maharashtra.

A Special MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) court had earlier ruled that the ATS had wrongly applied the MCOCA in the case against Thakur, Purohit and nine others.