Bombay High Court grants bail to four accused in 2006 Malegaon Blasts case

The Bombay High Court yesterday granted bail to four accused in the 2006 Malegaon Blasts case – Dhan Singh, Manohar Nawaria, Rajendra Chaudhary and Lokesh Sharma. The Court ordered that they be released on a bail bond of Rs. 50,000 each..The four accused were directed to be present for the trial every day and not to influence witnesses or tamper with the evidence. They will need to arrange sureties within four weeks..The order was passed by a Division Bench of Justices Indrajit Mahanty and AM Badar..The accused were in jail since their arrest by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2013. They had approached the Bombay High Court in 2016 after a special court had rejected their bail plea in June that year..The Bombay High Court, while granting the bail to appellants, stated in its order that the observations made by the Supreme Court in Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit v. State of Maharashtra apply in the present case of four appellants as well, due to inconsistency of evidence reported by the investigation agencies..The order passed by the High Court yesterday states,“Observations of the Hon’ble Apex Court in the matter of Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit, as noted in paragraph 32 of the report, applies with full force to the case in hand, because of divergence and variance of evidence reflected from the charge sheet and supplementary reports.”.In 2017, after spending more than eight years in jail, Purohit was granted bail by the Supreme Court in 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts case..The NIA, which is currently probing the 2006 Malegaon blasts case, had disapproved previous reports of Maharashtra ATS and CBI and had arrested four appellants and others in 2013..The local police and the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had arrested nine men from a minority community in 2006 after their initial probe. The case was later investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and subsequently by the NIA..In 2016, a special court acquitted all those nine men on grounds of insufficient evidence to prove their involvement in the case. One of them died while the case was pending in the special court..When the NIA took over the probe, it concluded that the blasts were carried out by people belonging to the majority community. The agency arrested the four appellants and certain others in 2013..The four appellants sought bail and argued that there was no case against them and that they should be released. Apart from seeking bail, they had also challenged the discharge of the nine men..The serial bomb blasts had taken place outside a cemetery near Hamidia mosque at Malegaon in Nashik district of Maharashtra on September 8, 2006..Bombs planted on bicycles parked near a mosque went off in the afternoon after Friday prayers on the occasion of Shab-e-Baraat. The blasts claimed 37 lives and over 100 people were injured..Two years later, on September 29, 2008, Malegaon witnessed two more bomb blasts, the trial for which is currently in progress in a Special NIA court..Read the order:.Bar & Bench is available on WhatsApp. For real-time updates on stories, Click here to subscribe to our WhatsApp.