Bombay HC Acquits 12 Persons In 7/11 Mumbai Train Blasts Case After 19 Years

In a severe setback for the Maharashtra government, the Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted 12 persons from the charges of carrying out bomb blasts in Mumbai trains in 2006 observing that the prosecution “utterly failed” to prove the case and that it was ”hard to believe they committed the crime”. 

A special bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak quashed and set aside the 2015 order of the special MCOCA court which sentenced five persons to death and seven to life in prison. One of the accused died in prison in 2022 due to COVID pending appeal. The judges said that the benefit of acquittal is extended to the deceased person as well. 

The court also said the evidence relied on by the prosecution was not conclusive to convict the accused persons and that the witness statements and alleged recoveries made from the accused have ”no evidentiary value”. 

“The prosecution has utterly failed to establish the offence beyond reasonable doubt against the accused on each count ... it is unsafe to reach the satisfaction that the appellants/accused have committed the offences for which they have been convicted and sentenced,” the bench said  in a detailed 671-page judgment. 

#PHOTOS | 2006 Mumbai Train Serial Bomb Blast: 12 Acquitted; Family Members Of Accused Celebrate Outside Bombay High Court

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The court has directed their release forthwith, if not required  in any other case. On July 11, 2006, RDX blasts at seven locations on the suburban rail network of Mumbai in a span of 11 minutes had claimed 189 lives and injured 827 commuters. 

The court declared all the confessional statements of the accused as “inadmissible” saying: “Confessional statements were not found to be truthful and complete on various grounds, including some portions of the same were found to be similar and copied.” In addition, the court underlined that the accsued established the fact of torture was inflicted upon them to extort confessional statements. 

Criticising the “habit” of police to extract confessions, the HC said: “It is well known that, in most of the cases, police are in the habit of extorting confessions by illegal and improper means, including by causing torture. It is a settled law that confessions obtained in this  manner must be excluded from evidence as it is not safe to receive a statement made by an accused under any influence of fear or favour.” 

The bench said the confessional statements are vague on several aspects like planning of the conspiracy, in what containers the bombs were packed, how they were detonated, what device was used to trigger the bombs and so on.

“If we go into the history, we can get the evidence of police atrocities from 1817, i.e. for more than two centuries,” the bench observed.  

The prosecution has failed to even bring on record the type of bombs used in the crime and that the evidence relied on by it was not conclusive to convict the accused. 

The judges emphasised that it was important to punish the “actual perpetrators” to curb criminal activities, uphold the rule of law, and ensure the safety and security of citizens. But at the same time such “deceptive closure undermines public trust and falsely reassures society, while in reality, the true threat remains at large. Essentially, this is what the case at hand conveys”. 

The high court also refused to accept the evidence given by witnesses – including taxi drivers who drove the accused to the train station, those who saw the accused plant the bombs, those who were witness to bombs being assembled and those who were witness to the alleged conspiracy. 

The court also noted that the provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Syndicate (MCOCA) would not apply to this case and that sanction for the same was granted in a "mechanical manner without application of mind".

Five accused, who were awarded death sentences by the trial court, were Mohammad Faisal Shaikh (42) , Ehtesham Siddiqui (35), Naveed Hussain Khan (36), Asif Khan (45) and Kamal Ahmed Ansari (39), who died due to Covid in 2022. They were accused of planting the bombs.

Those who were awarded life in prison are Tanvir Ahmed Ansari, Mohammad Majid Shafi, Shaikh Alam Shaikh, Mohd Sajid Ansari, Muzzammil Shaikh, Soheil Mehmood Shaikh and Zamir Ahmad Shaikh. 

On July 11, 2006, RDX blasts at seven locations on the suburban rail network of Mumbai in a span of 11 minutes had claimed 189 lives and injured 827 commuters. After an eight-year-long trial, 12 out of the 13 accused were convicted. While five were given the death sentence, the remaining seven were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Initially, seven different FIRs were registered at local police stations. Considering the gravity of the offence, the case was transferred to the State Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) the same month. ATS claimed that the accused were members of the banned outfit Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and had hatched the conspiracy with Pakistani members of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

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While 13 accused were arrested, 15 people were shown as wanted, some of them allegedly in Pakistan. One of the accused died while planting the bomb in the train and the other was shot dead in an encounter. The ATS, invoked the MCOCA and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, and the chargesheet was filed in November 2006. 

There were 192 prosecution witnesses and 51 defence witnesses and two court witnesses. As it was not possible to get all injured witnesses to court, the prosecution submitted 252 affidavits of the injured witnesses.