00:00Good morning viewers, this is Tejas Joshi reporting from Mumbai for Lokmat Times.
00:03Right now I'm standing outside the NIA Special Court
00:06and the big news that is coming from NIA Special Court is all the accused in Malaga bomb blast
00:11including Sadvi Pragya, Colonel Purohit and Major Upadhyay have all been acquitted in this case.
00:17The Special NIA Court has given this verdict almost after 16 years
00:21and they have acquitted all the accused due to lack of evidence.
00:25I'll give you the bit background of this case.
00:28On 29th September 2008 in Malaga district of Nashik,
00:32a bomb blast occurred in predominantly Muslim majority area in the month of Ramzan.
00:36The bomb was attached to a scooter and it exploded and killed around 6 people and injured over 100 people.
00:43Sadvi Pragya was accused of owning the scooter to which the bomb was attached
00:46and she was arrested in 2008 along with others.
00:49But today the NIA Special Court has said that there is no conclusive evidence
00:53of the connection of the scooter to Sadvi Pragya.
00:56Also, Colonel Upadhyay was arrested for providing explosive used in the attack
01:01but the court has also said that there is no conclusive evidence of the explosive being provided to Colonel Purohit.
01:07All the accused were earlier connected to an organization called Abhinav Bharat
01:12but the court has today said that there is no proof that this organization, Abhinav Bharat,
01:17has provided any funds, any money used in this blast.
01:21I'll just give you the basics of what the court has said.
01:24The accused were booked under several sections including the UAPA
01:27but the court today said that UAPA does not apply on this case.
01:31I'll quote what the court has said, UAPA will not be invoked in this case as sanction was not taken as per the rules.
01:37Both the sanction orders of the UAPA in this case are defective.
01:42This is what the court has said as far as UAPA is concerned and in the case of Abhinav Bharat,
01:47the court has said Abhinav Bharat organization was used as a common reference by the prosecution.
01:52There is no evidence that the money of the Abhinav Bharat was used for terror activities, the court has said.
01:58The court has also said that the prosecution proved that a blast occurred in Malaga but failed to prove that a bomb was placed in that motorcycle.
02:07The court has come to conclusion that the injured people were not 101 but 95 only
02:11and there was manipulation in some medical certificates.
02:15So the NIA court has completely crashed the NIAs and ATS case.
02:20The case was earlier with ATS and it was transferred to NIA in 2011
02:23but after 16 years of trial all the accused have been acquitted
02:28and this comes in the backdrop of Mumbai local blast accused have also been acquitted recently.
02:35So there are now two terror cases in which there have been no conviction
02:38and it raises a serious question about our investigating agencies
02:41and there will be questions asked to investigating agencies
02:44why in such massive terror cases there have been no conviction.
02:48We will have to see what reaction come to this verdict declared by the NIA special court.
02:54This case was specially in the news because a termed Hindu terror was coined
02:58after this case come to fore after this blast had occurred
03:01and the then regime of congress party had accused the Hindu nationalist right-wing organizations
03:07of creating Hindu terror in the country to avenge the earlier blast in the country.
03:12But right now the whole case has fallen flat and the NIA court has acquitted all the accused.
03:18This is what we know so far.
03:19This is the developing story.
03:21We will come with more updates on this.
03:23Until next time keep watching Lokmat Times.
03:25This is Tejas Joshi with cameraman Harsh Kamle from Mumbai.
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