The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday filed draft charges in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case and the agency has neither pressed provisions of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), nor charged Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and three other accused to whom the agency has given a clean chit.
The agency has charged the rest of the accused under 13 different counts under various sections of the IPC, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Arms Act and Explosive Substance Act. According to sources, the agency has charged these accused for serious crimes like criminal conspiracy, murder, attempt to murder and causing grievous hurt by means of explosives.
The trial against the accused would begin only after the special MCOCA court would take cognisance and frame charges against the accused.
Apart from Sadhvi Pragya, the NIA in May had given clean chits to Lokesh Sharma, Dhan Singh Choudhary, Shiv Narayan Kalsangra, Shyam Bhavarlal Sahu and Praveen Takkalki and the agency has not pressed for any charges against these accused.
Though on the request of the NIA the court has already discharged Lokesh Sharma and Dhan Singh from the case, the court had rejected the bail application filed by Sadhvi Pragya sometime ago.
Initially, 12 persons including Sadhvi Pragya and Lt Col Prasad Purohit were arrested for carrying out the blast at Malegaon on September 29, 2008, which killed and injured 100 others. The accused had been booked under the stringent MCOCA but later, as per the Supreme Court’s directions, MCCOA was dropped from the case.
Now, the agency has filed draft charges against Ramesh Upadhyay, Sameer Kulkarni, Raja Rahirkar, Rakesh Dhawde, Jagdish Mhatre, Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Swami Amritanand alias Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange.
