New Delhi: In a letter to the chief justice of the Bombay high court, the father of one of the victims of the 2008 Malegaon blasts has requested that the tenure of the special judge currently presiding over the case be extended until the trial is completed, the Free Press Journal reported.
Nisar Ahmed Sayed Bilal, the father of Sayed Azhar, who was among the six people killed in the incident, noted in an April 16 letter that Special Judge P.R. Sitre has been consistently hearing the matter since he took charge of it in 2020 and has been watchful of the attempts of some of the accused to prolong the trial.
Bilal, who is an intervenor in the 14-year-old case, wrote that the matter had moved along slowly in the past until V.S. Padalkar, Sitre’s predecessor, took charge of the case and picked up the pace of proceedings “with fairness and objectivity”.
More than 300 witnesses are present in the case of which Special Judge Padalkar deposed around 140 and Special Judge Sitre deposed around 100.
The Bombay high court’s annual general transfer order for 2022 has transferred Sitre from Mumbai to Ahmednagar.
In his letter, Bilal also commends Sitre for being able to press forward with the matter despite the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing lockdown as well as the efforts of the “high-profile” accused in the case, who he alleges have been trying to derail the matter.
Among the accused is Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, who served nine years in jail for the case before being released on bail in 2017 on health grounds, despite being charged under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
The other accused in the case are Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, Sameer Kulkarni, Rakesh Dhawade, Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Pravin Takalki.
Purohit had moved the high court seeking an interim stay in proceedings against him on March 31 this year, but the court had rejected the prayer outright.
Bilal’s letter also pointed out that for a new judge to get acquainted with the particulars of the case, which involves thousands of pages of documents, will further slow down the case which has been going on for 14 years. Moreover, only a few witnesses remain to be examined.
Bilal’s letter also accused the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of refusing to cooperate, which has “allegedly used every tactic to slow the trial,” the letter reads.
“That undersigned victim along with other sufferers of the blast have vested full faith in the judiciary of the country and believe that although justice has been delayed, it will not be denied to them,” the Free Press Journal quoted Bilal’s letter as saying.
The blasts had taken place on September 29, 2008 near Bikku Chowk in Malegaon when two explosives rigged to a Hero Honda motorcycle exploded, killing six, including a juvenile, and injuring over 100 individuals. The blast followed one in New Delhi three days prior and took place almost simultaneously with one in Gujarat.
The Mumbai Anti-terror Squad (ATS), which was investigating the matter, traced the motorcycle back to the accused and showed the involvement of a number of Hindu extremist groups in the incident.
The ensuing investigation implicated several of the accused in other terror attacks as well, including the Modasa blast in Gujarat, the Malegaon blast of 2006, the Mecca Masjid Blast in Hyderabad in 2007 and the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast.
This article first appeared on thewire.in