Nearly 20 years after four bombs exploded in Malegaon, Nashik district, the hope for answers to obvious questions, such as who executed the crime and why, faded this week when the Bombay High Court discharged the four accused. The blasts occurred after Friday prayers on September 8, 2006, in Hamidia Masjid, Bada Kabrastan, and Mushawarat Chowk, killing 31 and injuring more than 310.
The HC quashed a special court order framing charges against Rajendra Chaudhary, Dhan Singh, Manohar Ram Singh Narwaria, and Lokesh Sharma under the erstwhile Indian Penal Code and the stringent Unlawful (Activities) Prevention Act.
The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had probed the case, arrested nine Muslim men, and filed a chargesheet in December 2006. Two months later, the case was transferred to the CBI, which filed a supplementary chargesheet against the nine. In April 2011, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the case and accused the four Hindu men instead.
Questions remain after discharge
Unless a legally robust appeal is filed against the HC’s discharge order, the route to trial and verdict remains closed. There will not be closure for families of the victims and survivors either.
Such an appeal, although legally tenable, seems far-fetched in the prevailing climate of triumphant majoritarianism and a biased establishment at the Centre and in Maharashtra.
Yet, in the long arc of India’s socio-political history, it is crucial to establish the guilt because the Malegaon 2006 blasts were, prima facie, a part of a larger pattern of low-level bomb blasts targeting Muslims in the early 2000s.
Pattern of similar attacks
Another round of blasts in Malegaon in 2008 killed six and injured over 100; in 2007, blasts in the Samjhauta Express took 68 lives; in Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid, five were killed and over 50 injured; and at the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, three were killed and over 30 injured.
The Modasa, Gujarat, blasts during Ramzan in 2008 killed a boy and injured 10. The investigations into some of these led initially to Muslim men and their arrests, and then to members of Hindu right-wing groups.
Over the years, due to procedural lapses in investigations or the NIA filing closure reports, the conspiracies continue to be a suspense. Who masterminded these blasts? Has political pressure been brought on the NIA?
Investigations and unanswered concerns
The probe into the Malegaon blasts in 2008 by ATS chief Hemant Karkare, later killed in the 26/11 attacks, pointed to a Hindu right-wing conspiracy based on video recordings, detailed witness statements, and wiretaps; it eventually snared Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, and Swami Aseemanand, among others.
The NIA took over the case. The Sadhvi was elected to the Lok Sabha. All seven accused were acquitted in July last year. The role of Abhinav Bharat, revived by Purohit and Himani Savarkar to “throw out the Constitution” and establish a nation on “Vedic principles”, has since been forgotten.
The HC discharge points once again to a broken process of investigation. The NIA must reflect; it owes answers and accountability to all Indians.
