2008 Malegaon blasts case: Bombay High Court asks NIA about trial completion time

The Bombay High Court on Monday asked the National Investigation Agency about the estimated time by which trial in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts case would be completed, PTI reported. The blasts had killed six people and injured 100.

A division bench of Justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre asked NIA advocate Sandesh Patil to give a schedule of the trial and state within two weeks by when it will be completed. Patil informed the bench that the trial court has so far examined 124 witnesses out of 475 prosecution witnesses.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by one of the accused, Sameer Kulkarni. He sought a direction to the lower court to complete the trial within six months and that the trial proceedings be video recorded.

Meanwhile, the NIA in another matter related to the case, sought further time to submit a list of names of prosecution witnesses whom they propose to examine out of those whose statements have been truncated.

A division bench of Justices IA Mahanty and AM Badar were hearing a petition filed by an another accused, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, challenging the order of the special NIA court that had rejected his application seeking access to “untruncated” copies of the witnesses’ statements that are part of the chargesheet.

The bench posted the petition for next hearing on August 2.

Patil told the court that the agency would not till then examine the evidence of those witnesses whose names and statements have been truncated.

On July 8, a special court had examined the motorbike, allegedly owned by Pragya Singh Thakur, which was seized from the blast site in Malegaon.

On October 30, 2018, the special court had framed charges of murder, abetment and conspiracy for the blast against Purohit, Thakur, Sameer Kulkarni, retired major Ramesh Upadhyay, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Ajay Rahilkar and Sudhakar Chaturvedi.