SC notice to Mah Govt on Pragya Thakur's bail plea

A bench comprising Justices J M Panchal and Gyan Sudha Misra sought the reply from Maharashtra's anti-terrorist squad (ATS) which had arrested Thakur and later booked her under the stringent MCOCA.

Advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for Thakur, alleged that Thakur was kept in 14 days "illegal" custody before she was produced in a trial court on October 23, 2008.
The Bombay High Court had rejected Thakur's bail plea on March 12 following which she approached the apex court.

The high court had also quashed the decision of the special court to drop the charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and allowed the prosecution to charge Thakur and the ten other accused in the Malegaon bomb blast case under the special law.

The trial of the case is slated to take place at a special MCOCA court.
Seven people were killed in a bomb blast on September 29, 2008, at Malegaon, a communally-sensitive textile town in Nasik district Maharashtra. The probe into the blast had brought into focus some right-wing Hindu groups.A special MCOCA court had on July 31, 2009 had held that the ATS had wrongly applied MCOCA in the case against Pragya, Purohit and nine others.

The 4,000-page chargesheet had alleged that Malegaon was selected as the blast target because Muslims form the majority of its population. It named Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel S P Purohit and another accused Swami Dayanand Pandey as the key conspirators.
The chargesheet had further alleged that it was Pandey who had instructed Purohit to arrange for the RDX while Pragya owned the motorcycle used in the blast.

Ajay Rahirkar, another accused, allegedly organised funds for the terror act while conspiracy meetings were held at Bhonsala Military School in Nasik.Rakesh Dhawde, Ramesh Upadhyay, Shyamlal Sahu, Shivnarain Kalsangra, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Jagdish Mhatre and Sameer Kulkarni are the other six accused.