7/11 blasts | After acquittal, 9 walk out jails, two still in prison amid pending cases

Mumbai: Nine of the eleven persons acquitted by the Bombay High Court in the 7/11 serial train blasts case have been released from various prisons in Maharashtra, while two others will continue to be behind bars as other cases are pending against them, officials said on Tuesday.

Nineteen years after seven train blasts here killed more than 180 persons, the high court on Monday acquitted all the 12 accused, saying the prosecution utterly failed to prove the case and it was "hard to believe the accused committed the crime".

The court allowed the appeals filed by the accused challenging their conviction and sentences imposed on them by a special court in 2015. Of the 12, five had been sentenced to death and seven to life imprisonment by the special court. One of the death row convicts died in 2021.

Sajid Magrub Ansari, who was serving his sentence at the Nashik Road prison, was out on parole when the high court pronounced the acquittal verdict, an official said.

On Tuesday morning, Ansari appeared before the prison officials, and after completing the formalities, he was released from the prison, he said.

On Monday, the Yerawada Central Prison in Pune released one of the two prisoners who were serving the sentence.

The prison department released Arif Khan Bashir Khan, but Mohammed Faisal Rahman Shaikh was still in jail as another case was pending against him.

Ethesham Siddiqui and Mohammed Ali Alam Sher Shaikh were released from the Nagpur central prison. But one of their inmates, Naveed Khan, remained in prison as he was an undertrial in an attempted murder case.

Kamal Ansari, a death row convict in the blasts case, died during the COVID-19 pandemic, the official said.

Dr Tanveer Ansari, Sohail Mahemud Shaikh, Zameer Ahmed Latipur Rahman Shaikh, and Mohammed Sajid Mohammed Shafi were released from the Amaravati prison, and Mujammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh was released from the Nashik Road central prison.

Siddiqui and Shaikh, who were released from Nagpur, reached Mumbai by flight this evening. They were welcomed at the airport by their relatives and friends, who turned emotional to meet them.