Malegaon blast accused pose for the media after they were discharged by a special MCOCA court. (Photo: Debasish Dey)
A special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court on Monday discharged eight Muslim accused from the decade-old Malegaon bomb blast case — in which 31 persons had lost their lives — due to lack of evidence.
Hearing the 2006 case, the judge said he was accepting the discharge application filed by the eight accused as there was no evidence to prove their guilt.
There were a total of nine accused in this case and the court has discharged all of them. The judgment, however, came too late for Shabbir Ahmed Masiullah as he died pending trial. Two other accused, Mohammed Ali Shaikh and Asif Khan, despite being discharged from the case, will remain in prison because they were convicted in the 2006 Mumbai local serial train blasts case. Noorul Huda Shamsudduha, Raees Ahmed Mansuri, Mohammed Zahid Ansari, Abrar Ahmed Gulam Ahmed, Dr Farog Iqbal Ahmed Magdumi and Dr Salman Farsi were the other accused discharged by special MCOCA judge V.V. Patil.
The ATS and accused persons belonging to a right-wing group arrested by the NIA in this case had opposed the discharge application filed by the eight accused, saying that the court should take into consideration material put on record by the ATS and CBI that was against these nine accused.
The contention of the defence was that Section 6 of the NIA Act gives overriding effect to the NIA over other agencies, like ATS and CBI, and hence the court should take into account the investigation carried out by the NIA and not other agencies. The defence had also argued that the motive contended by the ATS for carrying out the blast by nine Muslim accused is illogical, as it has claimed that the accused wanted communal riots in Malegaon.
“Had it been their intention, then being a Muslim why would they carry out blasts in a masjid... They would have done this in a temple,” said advocate Sharif Shaikh, adding that the court would have considered this.
Interestingly, Dr Salman Farsi had not filed for discharge. “My view was that I am innocent and whatever material the NIA has put before the court proves my innocence, and hence the court itself should discharge me from the case. And hence I had not filed a discharge application,” Dr Farsi told this newspaper. He added, “The ATS falsely implicated us, and when the government announced that the investigation would be handed over to the CBI, the ATS filed a chargesheet against us on day 59. Though it had 180 more days on its hands to complete its investigation, they filed it in a hurry so that the CBI could not change their line of investigation and their lie is not uncovered. But now the court has discharged us.”
