Muddied probes deny justice to not just the accused but also the victims

{ BY INVITATION

- Sharmeen Hakim

Justice JR Midha (retd) of the Delhi High Court once profoundly stated, “In a court of ‘justice’ both parties know the truth; it is the judge who is on trial.

For anyone familiar with the quality of evidence presented in the 2006 7/11 Mumbai serial train blast case, the Bombay High Court's decision on Monday to acquit 11 men (Kamal Ansari passed away while the proceedings were pending)—five of whom had been sentenced to death by a trial court in 2015—was simply a discharge of its duty.

This article won't delve into the unspeakable horrors of the third-degree torture these men endured in prison and later testified to in court, nor the agonizing wait for judgment that stretched from days into months, years, and even decades, or the abject poverty resulting from their incarceration, or the deaths of spouses and parents during their 19-year-long imprisonment.

Instead, this article aims to raise critical questions about a case shrouded in controversy from its inception, specifically regarding the accountability of investigating agencies that relied on unreliable evidence to secure convictions and assuage ‘society's collective conscience’.

In this particular case, such evidence sealed the fate of 13 men, some of whom were merely students at the time of their arrest in 2006.

The 7/lI train blasts trial was riddled with allegations of forced confessions and improbable eyewitness accounts right from the beginning.

Eleven of the 13 accused in the case testified under oath to prove their innocence, providing vivid details of third-degree police torture, particularly before their alleged confessions.

Forced confessions are inadmissible as evidence under law.