A special NIA court in Mumbai on Thursday asserted that it will deliver the judgement in the 2008 Malegaon blast case on July 31. The court stated that the case entails voluminous documents and it requires time to deliver the verdict.
2008 Malegaon Blast Case Judgement On July 31
The court stated that the case entails voluminous documents and it requires time to deliver the verdict.
The court on April 19 had scheduled the verdict for May 8 and had directed the accused to appear before the court on the said date. The accused have now been asked to mark their presence on the next reserved date.
All accused including Lt Col Prasad Purohit, BJP leader Pragya Thakur, Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sameer Kulkarni have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and for criminal conspiracy and murder under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
During the trial, 323 witnesses were examined by the prosecution out of which 34 turned hostile.
The case involved an explosive device which was attached to a motorcycle that went off near a mosque in Malegaon killing six people and leaving over 100 injured.
The case was earlier being investigated by the Anti Terror Squad (ATS) before it was handed over to the NIA in 2011. NIA had filed its first charge sheet in 2016 asserting that it found no evidence against Pragya Thakur along with three other accused.
The special court dropped the charges of MCOCA while refusing to exonerate any of the accused including Thakur. The trial of the case commenced in December 2018 and the hearing of evidence was closed in September 2023.
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