The Bombay High Court observed the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) “utterly failed” to prove its case and acquitted 12 persons who were convicted of orchestrating the 2006 serial blasts in Mumbai’s local trains killing 189 and injuring 820. The high court said the trial’s fairness was eroded by procedural missteps, and faulty evidentiary practices and unreliable confessional statements.
The special bench comprising Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak set aside the 2015 judgment of the special MCOCA court (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) which convicted 12 persons and acquitted one. Kamal Ansari (dead), Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan, and Asif Khan were given the death penalty after the trial court found them guilty of planting the bombs and other charges.
Tanveer Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Ansari, Mohammed Majid Mohammed Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Suhail Mehmood Shaikh, and Zameer Ahmed Rehman Shaikh were sentenced to life in prison.
The high court observed that though punishing the real perpetrators of a crime is “a concrete and essential step toward curbing criminal activities,” creating “a false appearance of having solved a case” gives “a misleading sense of resolution”.
“This deceptive closure undermines public trust and falsely reassures society, while in reality, the true threat remains at large,” the high court said.
The high court's decision is a blow to Maharashtra's anti-terrorist cell which probed the case. Former ATS-Chief KP Raghuvanshi, who led the probe, said the agency had built a strong case and the state government should appeal the high court's verdict.
What happened in July 2006?
On July 11, 2006 within six minutes, a series of seven high-intensity bombs detonated in the Mumbai trains during rush hour killing 187 and injuring 820 persons. The blasts known as the 7/11 blasts disabled the city’s lifeline and brought the financial capital to a standstill.
The bombs—which were placed in pressure cookers—went off at 6:30 pm. Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) took over investigation from the state police and named 17 people in its chargesheet including Pakistani nationals. Of the 13 persons who faced trial in the special MCOCA court, 12 were convicted and one was acquitted.
Why did the High Court overturn the judgment?
The Bombay High Court observed that the ATS “utterly failed” to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. The high court pointed out procedural lapses and questioned the trustworthiness of the eyewitnesses who identified the accused.
- Sufficient Evidence Of Torture To Extort Confessions
The high court observed the confessions made by the accused were “not found to be truthful”. The bench perused hospital records to conclude that it “sufficiently hinted at the possibility of torture” being inflicted on the accused to extort confessions.
“These essential elements of the offence, about which only the perpetrators could possess the knowledge, are missing which creates doubt about the genuineness of the confessional statements or the truthfulness of the same,” the high court observed in its 671-page judgment. The high court added that the “in the absence of essential information,” the confessional statements lacked the “necessary” information about how the conspiracy was planned, where the RDX was sourced from and other important details leading to the execution of the plan.
The bench pointed out how “the use of identical language and expressions, particularly when describing specific incidents, by different individuals, recorded at different times, is highly improbable”.
- Destruction Of Evidence
The high court indicted the ATS for destroying evidence which raised “serious doubts over the integrity of the investigation” and amounted to a “grave violation” of one’s right to a fair trial. The prosecution also went to “extraordinary lengths to suppress” material evidence, the high court said.
- Eyewitness Testimony Not Trustworthy
The high court noted that the eight witnesses examined by the prosecution included the taxi driver who drove the accused to the train station; those who saw the accused planting the bombs in the trains, those who witnessed the assembly of the bombs and were witness to the conspiracy.
The bench found significant flaws in the eyewitness accounts and concluded them to be unreliable and insufficient to establish guilt. The high court also ruled the identification parade was procedurally wrong and dismissed the results of the same.
The court considered the significant delay—more than 100 days—in recording statements for most key eyewitnesses and a four-month delay in conducting test identification parade, raising questions about the fairness and reliability of their memory.
The high court also doubted the veracity of eyewitness testimony and concluded that some of them were “stock witnesses”.
The high court noted that it did not consider some of the evidence “worth relying” after the defence’s success in “shattering” oral evidence during cross-examination.
- Evidence Not Established According To Law
High court said the prosecution failed to establish a proper chain of custody and ruled out the evidence regarding the explosives. The “evidentiary value of these recoveries does not attach any importance on the ground that the prosecution failed to establish and prove the proper custody and proper sealing which ought to be intact till the articles were taken to Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL),” the high court noted.
The court further observed that the circuit boards recovered from two of the accused were of “no help to the prosecution to establish as the prosecution failed to bring any evidence on record and to establish the type of bombs used in the present case.”