7/11 Mumbai train blasts: Bombay High Court acquits all 12 accused; says prosecution 'utterly failed' to prove case

Mumbai: Punching holes in the police investigation, rejecting the pressure-cooker bomb angle and doubting the confessional statements and testimony of witnesses, the Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted all the 12 accused in the July 11, 2006, serial bombing in the local trains which shook Mumbai.

As many as 187 people were killed and over 1,000 others were injured in the seven blasts in seven minutes in first-class compartments of evening Western Railway local trains.

The incident - 19 years ago - which is the worst-terror attack in the metropolitan transportation system in the world - is commonly known as the 7/11 terror attack.

The verdict comes as a major embarrassment to the Maharashtra police and the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which conducted the investigations.

On 11 September, 2015, a special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), convicted 12 accused - of which five were sentenced to death and seven given life terms.

“The prosecution has utterly failed to establish the offence beyond the reasonable doubt against the accused on each count, it is unsafe to reach the satisfaction that the appellants/accused have committed the offences for which they have been convicted and sentenced,” said the division bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice Anil Kilor and Justice Shyam Chandak.

“The impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence is liable to be quashed and set aside. In the result, the aforesaid confirmation case is liable to be answered in the negative, and all the appeals deserve to be allowed,” the bench said.

The court also rejected all the confessional statements and observed: “Confessional statements were not found to be truthful and complete on various grounds, including some portions of the same were found to be similar and copied. The accused succeeded in establishing the fact of torture inflicted on them to extort confessional statements”.

The Bombay HC also said that the projection could not link the accused to Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba intelligence chief and ISI chief Azam Cheema alias Babaji.

"It is pertinent to note that the prosecution had sought the police custody remand of the accused on the ground, inter alia, that the accused were in contact with Pakistanis, Azam Cheema and his associates. Yet, even after the defence produced the CDR, the prosecution failed to establish any nexus between the accused and Pakistani nationals, including Azam Cheema and his associates.”

The court also said that the prosecution established that some of the accused visited Pakistan, the evidence, in itself, is not sufficient to indicate or suggest or to establish the fact of commission of bomb blasts by these accused.

The court rejected the finding that the bombs were concealed in pressure cookers - and shattered the evidence presented by the ATS

Picking up holes it said that a witness, Mohanlal Kumawat, had claimed some Kashmiri persons had bought 8 pressure cookers from him in May 2006.

“Though his statement is relevant from the point of view of the prosecution story that the bombs were packed in cookers by the accused, he was not examined or called for the Test Identification parade,” said the judges, adding that the "defence argued how some who testified were either ‘got up’ or ‘stock’ witnesses of the prosecution….The prosecution has failed to even bring on record the type of bombs used in the alleged crime. Hence, the evidence of recovery is not sufficient to prove the offence against the accused”.

The five death row convicts were Kamal Ansari (now dead), Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan and Asif Khan.

The seven who were granted lifers were Tanveer Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Ansari, Mohammed Majid Mohammed Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Suhail Mehmood Shaikh and Zameer Ahmed Rehman Shaikh.

Quote:

“Punishing the actual perpetrator of a crime is a concrete and essential step toward curbing criminal activities, upholding the rule of law, and ensuring the safety and security of citizens. But creating a false appearance of having solved a case by presenting that the accused have been brought to justice gives a misleading sense of resolution. This deceptive closure undermines public trust and falsely reassures society, while in reality, the true threat remains at large.”

- Justice Anil Kilor

Materials insufficient to sustain a conviction:

Prosecution’s reliance on confessional statements, witness testimonies, and forensic recoveries, holding that the materials lacked reliability and were insufficient to sustain a conviction.

The prosecution has failed to even bring on record the type of bombs used in the alleged crime.

Some portions of the confessional statements were found to be similar and copied.

Accused people established that the confession statements were extracted through torture.

The recoveries of books, maps, CPUs were not sufficient to establish the crime.

The prosecution failed to establish any nexus between the accused and the Pakistani nationals, including Azam Cheema and his associates.

Evidentiary value of recoveries - RDX, granules, detonator, cooker, printed circuit boards, soldering gun, books, maps - does not as prosecution failed to attach any importance on the ground that the prosecution failed to establish and prove the proper custody and proper sealing.