Arun Jaitley: Let court take its view on Malegaon blast

Amid Opposition allegations of NIA diluting charges against some accused in the Malegaon blast case, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday that the matter should now be left to the courts and that if anything was wrong or improper in the investigations, the judiciary will take a view on it. While criticising the Congress, Mr Jaitley said when the UPA was in power, it used investigating agencies for “fabricating” chargesheets, claiming in each of these cases the accused persons were discharged by courts even without a trial.

Speaking during a media interaction, Mr Jaitley, while reacting to dropping charges against Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and others in the Malegaon blast case, said, “These are legal matters which are based on the quality of evidence available. These are matters ultimately over which courts will have to take a view. The chargesheet will go to court. If anything is wrong or improper I am sure the courts will take a view.”

The finance minister, however, used the opportunity to hit back at the UPA and also took a dig at the media, saying it was “overgenerous” when some of these chargesheets were filed by probe agencies during the Manmohan Singh government.

“The manner in which investigation agencies were used, some of them, the manner in which credibility of some of the agencies declined I think was a record low,” Mr Jaitley said. In his previous role as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, he had written to the then PM about these cases and how chargesheets were fabricated.

“In each of the cases I referred to, each case without a single exception the courts did not even frame the charge. They discharged the accused even without a trial. The discharge took place not under the NDA, but when the UPA was in power, in some of them,” the finance minister said.

While not elaborating on these cases, Mr Jaitley had targeted the then UPA government over criminal cases against Amit Shah, now BJP president, in alleged fake encounter probe. Mr Shah subsequently received a clean chit in the fake encounter case.