Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted all 12 persons that a lower court convicted in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts.
The blasts that ripped through Mumbai local trains in 2006 claimed 189 lives and left over 800 people injured, becoming one of the worst terrorist attacks in India.
A trial court in 2015 convicted 12 people in the blast case handing out death sentence to five persons and life imprisonment to the rest.
Nineteen years after the blasts, the high court bench of Justice Anil Kilor and Justice Shyam Chandak today set aside the trial court order.
The court said that the prosecution had "utterly failed" to prove the case against the accused.
‘The prosecution has utterly failed to prove the case against the accused. It is hard to believe that the accused committed the crime. Hence, their conviction is quashed and set aside,’ the bench was quoted as saying.
The court directed authorities to release the accused from jail if they are not wanted in any other case.
The seven blasts that reverberated near the stations of Matunga Road, Mahim Junction, Bandra, Khar Road, Jogeshwari, Bhayandar and Borivali within 11 minutes on July 11, 2006 ripped through Mumbai local trains.
The first of the blasts, involving rigged pressure cookers to amply the damage, occurred at 6.24 pm targeting the rush hour passengers returning from their work with the last going off at 6.35 pm.
The bombs were planted in first-class compartments of trains from Churchgate.
The special court of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act sentenced Faisal Sheikh, Asif Khan, Kamal Ansari, Ehtesham Sidduqui and Naveed Khan to death.
The other convicts sentenced to life imprisonment for being part of the conspiracy were Mohammed Sajid Ansari, Mohammed Ali, Dr Tanveer Ansari, Majid Shafi, Muzzammil Shaikh, Sohail Shaikh and Zamir Shaikh.
Following the court’s ruling today, all the 12 convicts will now walk free.