Mumbai, Sept 19: A victim of the 2008 Malegaon blast filed an intervention in the case before the National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Tuesday.
The intervention will be heard before special judge Vinod Padalkar while Advocate Shrikant Shivade makes arguments on the government’s sanction to prosecute accused Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit.
Nisar Ahmed Sayyed Bilal, who is now bedridden, had lost his teenage son in the blasts. In 2017, Mr. Bilal had filed an intervention in the Bombay High Court opposing the bail plea of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, an accused in the case.
Mr. Bilal had also questioned the basis on which the charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act were dropped against accused.
Mr. Shivade said that the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) had been amended on December 31, 2008, requiring the government to form a committee if it wanted to prosecute anyone under it.
All the paper work in the case would have had to be handed over to the committee, which would then give its recommendations to the government. Mr. Shivade said that the government had not formed such a committee when it gave sanction on January 17, 2009 to prosecute Lt. Col. Purohit.
Mr. Shivade said that if the sanction was not valid, then there was no reason to prosecute the accused. The court has directed the NIA and Lt. Col. Purohit to file a reply to Mr. Bilal intervention. On September 5, the NIA court had deferred the framing of charges against all accused in the case and said it would hear arguments on the validity of sanctions granted to prosecute them under UAPA on a daily basis.
The court will then frame charges against Sameer Kulkarni, Lt. Col. Purohit, Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Ajay Rahilkar and Sadhvi Pragya. They have been charged under Sections 15 (terrorist act), 16 (punishment for terrorist act) and 18 (punishment for conspiracy) of UAPA.
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