Justice delayed itself is justice denied. But the double injustice of delaying justice and then denying it altogether is what our administrative and judicial systems have done to the victims of the Malegaon terror attack. On September 29, 2008, a bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded in Malegaon, Maharashtra, killing six people and injuring over a hundred. The incident took place in a Muslim-majority area during the month of Ramadan, the day before Eid al-Fitr. It coincided with Navratri too. This was the first terror attack case in which Hindutva organisations were implicated. The NIA court pronounced its verdict last Thursday acquitting all seven accused. Judge AK Lahoti's order stated that the prosecution had failed to prove the conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt. No evidence was presented to link the accused to the blast. The court awarded compensation to the families of those killed in the blast and the injured. It was proven that the blast took place and six people died in it, but it was not proven who did it - this is the gist of the court's verdict. While it is the government that should find the culprits through investigation, prove their guilt in court, and get them punished, the government itself is guilty of denying the victims the justice they deserve. If the investigation, which was moving in the right direction, was systematically sabotaged and the culprits spared, it is also a disgrace to the country.
And that is what can be presumed to have happened, going by the chronology of the case. Former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and military intelligence officer Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit are among the seven accused. The NIA investigation team used the strategy of losing the case. Three weeks after the terrorist attack, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) took over the investigation. A charge-sheet was filed in January 2009. Sections of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) were imposed. As Rohini Salian, the special public prosecutor, later revealed, there was a major intervention in the case after the BJP governments came to power in Delhi and Maharashtra. The NIA took over the case from the ATS. Rohini Salian said that the government, through the NIA, pressured her to take a soft approach against the accused. In any case, the case was slowly weakening. The ‘MCOCA’ sections were dropped. Now the court says that there were lapses in the investigation, there were irregularities in the collection of evidence and other procedures. There is no evidence that the explosives were planted on the bike, that the bike belonged to Pragya Singh, or that Purohit collected money to organise the explosives. The prosecution had tried to remove Pragya Singh in 2016 by saying that there was no evidence against her – but it didn’t work. Till then, the evidence that Salian had collected and submitted to the court was strong. The Supreme Court had also upheld it. But then, what happened was that the case investigation was transferred from the ATS to the NIA.
The NIA, on the other hand, decided to conduct a reinvestigation, ignoring the evidence at hand. The trial began ten years after the terrorist attack. The innocent victims had to travel to far-off Mumbai several times. A lot of money and effort were spent. However, the loopholes in the prosecution were such that the accused could escape. The transfer of Judge Takla, who refused to remove Pragya Singh from the case, was also a sign. Despite the seriousness of such a case, the judges were kept changing. The verdict was given by the fifth judge. Out of 323 witnesses, 39 turned approvers. There is every reason to believe that the prosecution and the witnesses were under a lot of pressure. The long delay in the case itself is an additional punishment for the poor and helpless victims. While the verdict in the case has been delivered, it raises unpleasant questions about the entire judicial system of the country.
Another face of injustice is the verdict in the Mumbai train blast case that came a few days ago. In it, 12 innocent people were released but not before having spent 19 years in jail. In the Malegaon case, the evidence available was lost through reinvestigation, enabling the release of the criminals. The finding is that there are no criminals in both cases, but there is guilt. The government is approaching the Supreme Court on the Mumbai verdict; it is not known whether there are any such plans in the Malegaon verdict. What is the way to correct the strange justice where the criminals escape and the innocent are simply put in jail?