NIA court rejects Colonel Prasad Purohit’s intelligence operation claims

A special NIA court recently, while rejecting the bail application filed by Colonel Prasad Purohit in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, said that if he had come to know about his name coming up in the case well in advance and that he would be apprehended, then why had he not taken the protection of his superiors, at whose instance he was doing a military intelligence operation.

The bail application had alleged that the ATS with the help of one Col. Srivastav had taken Purohit into custody on October 29, 2008 but he was kept in illegal custody before it was shown that he was officially arrested on November 5, 2008. However, the judge — relying on intercepted conversation between applicant and a co-accused — has observed that Purohit came to know on October 23 itself that his name was coming up so why had he not sought the protection of his superiors, to avoid false implication in this matter, at whose instance he was acting.

One of the major grounds for seeking bail was that the record of the Court of Enquiry (conducted by the army) as well as reply and documents filed by the ministry of defence show that Purohit had participated in meetings in discharge of his duty as a Military Intelligence Officer for collecting intelligence and creating new sources.

However special judge Shripad Tekale the accepted arguments of special public prosecutor

Avinash Rasal that the question of involvement of the applicant in the Malegaon bomb blast was not a subject matter of the Court of Enquiry, but these documents are not part of chargesheet filed by the ATS and NIA and hence cannot be considered for the purpose of deciding bail.

Purohit has also alleged that ATS officer API Bagade had planted RDX in co-accused Sudhakar Chaturvedi’s house and two army men in their statement before Court of Enquiry have also confirmed this. However the judge observed that the ATS officer had the recorded statement of one of them thrice but he or the other witness did not say that they had seen Bagade entering Chaturvedi’s house. These witnesses also did not say that they had stated this before ATS officer and it was not recorded.