Col Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, 5 others charged with Malegaon blast case

On Oct 30, 2018

MUMBAI-NP NEWS NETWORK- A special NIA court on Tuesday charged Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyaya, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sameer Kulkarni for the bomb blasts in Malegaon on September 29, 2008. They will be tried for terrorism under the Unlawful Activities (prevention) Act. Special judge Vinod Padalkar fixed the charges against the seven accused persons.

The judge read out the charges against all the accused present in the court, which the accused persons rejected and said that they will contest the charges. The hearing will now take place on November 2.

In 2008, six people were killed in an explosion in a motorcycle near Masjid at Bhikku Chowk in Malegaon. About 101 people were injured. Colonel Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh, and six other persons were arrested under the UAPA Act in connection with the blasts.

Later police had invoked the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), however the accused persons had challenged it in the Supreme Court and it was removed.

We are nationalist!

India is our country of Hindus. Sadhvi Pragya Singh denied that she could spread terrorism in her country. We are nationalist. She also accused the previous UPA government of trying to implicate them, saying that they are not terrorists. She also claimed that allegations of “Abhinav Bharat” are false.

Investigation by ATS, NIA

The ATS led by its then chief Hemant Karkare had initially investigated the Malegaon bomb blast case. Take this matter 10 persons were arrested, including Colonel Prasad Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. On April 13, 2011, the investigation was handed over to the NIA.

ATS filed the chargesheet in the case on January 20, 2009. The NIA team filed the supplementary charge sheet on April 21, 2011, involving 16 people. According to the final report submitted by the NIA, the NIA had told the special court that the confessional statement of accused under the MCOCA, can not be accepted as confession under the UAPA. The court had accepted NIA report and discharged six accused from the case.