The Andhra Pradesh and Telangana High Court rejected the resignation of Special National Investigation Agency court judge Ravinder Reddy, who acquitted all the accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case, NDTV reported on Thursday. Reddy had resigned on Monday, hours after he pronounced the verdict in the decade-old case.
Reddy resumed work on Thursday, and reported to the Fourth Additional Metropolitan Sessions Court in Hyderabad, The Hindu reported.
The judge had gone on 15 days of leave after submitting his resignation. However, the Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan cancelled his leave and asked Reddy to report to work immediately, The Indian Express.
In a letter to the metropolitan sessions judge and the chief justice of the High Court, Reddy had said he was resigning for personal reasons.
Reddy is also under the scrutiny of the High Court’s Vigilance Department after a complaint was filed against him by a litigant in a land dispute case. The complainant, Krishna Reddy, alleged that the judge showed “undue haste” in granting anticipatory bail to an accused. He claimed that the judge went against “settled practice” by granting relief to the accused whose five previous attempts at obtaining anticipatory bail from various courts had failed.
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen President Asaduddin Owaisi, who had blamed the NIA for failing to properly prosecute the accused in the Mecca Masjid blast case, said the judge’s decision was intriguing.
On Wednesday, Owaisi said he was ready to provide legal assistance to the family members of the blast victims if they wished to contest the verdict. “People call the National Investigation Agency a caged parrot, but I will say that it is blind and deaf also,” ANI quoted the Hyderabad legislator as saying.
The Mecca Masjid blast case
Nine people were killed and 58 were injured on May 18, 2007, after an improvised explosive device ripped through the mosque during Friday prayers.
The Hyderabad Police had carried out the initial inquiry before handing over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which filed a chargesheet against 10 accused – all members of right-wing groups. The National Investigation Agency took over the case from the CBI in 2011.
Only five of the 10 people were arrested and faced trial. They are Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma, Aseemanand alias Naba Kumar Sarkar, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar alias Bharat Bhai and Rajendra Chowdhary. One of the accused – Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Sunil Joshi was murdered – in December 2007 while former RSS member Sandeep V Dange and RSS activist Ramchandra Kalsangra are absconding. Authorities are still investigating Tejram Parmar and Amith Chowhan.
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