Bombay HC won’t interfere in bomb blast cases

The Bombay high court on Friday refused to interfere in some cases pertaining to various bomb blasts in Maharashtra saying any order passed by this court could adversely affect the appeal pending in other courts. The court however has sought copy of judgment passed by MCOCA court discharging nine accused from Malegaon 2006 blast case while hearing public interest litigation claiming that ATS was falsely implicating youths of minority community in bomb blast cases.

The division bench headed by Justice A.S. Oka was hearing a PIL filed by journalist Ashish Khetan and former Minority Commission chairman Munaf Hakim and an advocate Firoz Ansari have also intervened supporting the PIL, saying that youths belonging to minority are deliberately and unnecessarily being victimised by arraigning them in false and serious offences.

Senior counsel Mihir Desai on behalf of Mr Khetan argued before the court that the court should constitute an independent inquiry in respect of allegations made in the petition. The petition has raised questions on the investigations done in Pune’s German Bakery blast case, in which Himayat Baig was convicted and was awarded death sentence but the high court acquitted him from charge of bomb blast and convicted him of possession of explosives and commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment.

The petitioner has also claimed that members of Indian Mujahideen have already taken responsibilities blasts between 2003 to 2008 across India and there was contradiction between investigation of investigation agencies in respect of Mumbai serial blasts in local trains but still wrong set of accused were arrested.

The petition was filed in 2013 and came up for hearing on Friday and during this period this petition went before four different benches but could not be heard.

According to petition, the nine Muslim accused in Malegaon 2006 blast case were also wrongly arrested. The trial court, though, has recently discharged them. The bench has posted this petition for further hearing on June 17.