Trial in 2008 Malegaon blast case begins

A special court here Friday commenced trial in the September 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case against Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and five other accused.

The prosecuting agency, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), submitted a list of 286 witnesses which include doctors, police officers, forensic experts and panch witnesses.

The agency also submitted over 200 documents in support of its case.

Judge Vinod Padalkar, presiding over the special NIA court, accepted the witness list and documents and posted the matter for further hearing on November 12.

The court had on October 30 framed charges in the case against all the seven accused for terror activities, criminal conspiracy and murder, among others.

The accused face trial under sections of the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

They were charged under sections 16 (committing terrorist act) and 18 (conspiring to commit terrorist act) of the UAPA.

Under the IPC, they were charged under sections 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 153 (a) (promoting enmity between two religious groups).

The accused were also charged under relevant sections of the Explosive Substances Act.

Apart from Purohit and Sadhvi, the accused are - Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sameer Kulkarni.

The judge, while reading out the charges against the accused on October 30 had said, "The Abhinav Bharat organisation was formed with the common object to spread terrorism and a bomb with RDX was planted on a motorcycle in Malegaon that killed six persons and injured 101 others."