Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday directed its registry to collect all CDs and transcripts of the meetings held to execute the September 2008 Malegaon blasts and the chargesheet submitted in the trial by the investigation agencies. The court passed the order to verify the petitioner’s claim that Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur was present at Bhopal’s meeting and Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) has the transcripts of the meet.
The division bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi issued the direction after hearing the arguments of a blast victim’s father. The blast victim’s father has filed a petition in Bombay high court, opposing bail plea of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, who was not chargesheeted in the case by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) last year and is currently in judicial custody.
The high court has records of the meetings held in Faridabad but not of those that took place in other locations, including in Bhopal. Senior counsel B A Desai on behalf of the petitioner, claimed that the according to the chargesheet filed by the ATS, the transcript of the meeting held in Bhopal is available with the investigation agency. According to Mr Desai, Sadhvi was present at the meeting in Bhopal, but that transcript of the meeting has not been submitted before the high court.
He also alleged that investigation carried out by ATS and NIA is not satisfactory. The intervener has claimed that the witnesses held various meetings at different places, but the transcript of the meetings have not been submitted to the high court by the investigation agency. The high court directed its registry to collect all the 11 CDs, containing video recordings of meetings and submit it before the high court. The bench then deferred the hearing of intervener’s arguments till February 7.
The court is hearing bail application filed by Sadhvi, which claims that she has been languishing in jail for over six years and with two probe agencies have submitted contradictory findings to the court.
