HC acquits all 7/11 accused

Citing insufficient credible evidence and lapses in the investigation, the Bombay High Court overturned a 2015 judgement which sentenced five accused to death and seven others to life imprisonment.

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was so hurried and shoddy that a division bench of justices Anil S. Kilor and Shyam C. Chandak observed on Monday: “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.” While acquitting all the 13 accused they added that the prosecution had, “utterly failed to establish the offence beyond the reasonable doubt against the accused on each count,” and that it was unsafe to base the convictions on evidence adduced by the prosecution.

A total of 13 men were arrested by the Maharashtra ATS headed by IPS officer KP Raghuvanshi within four months of the blasts. The agency claimed that the blasts were the handiwork of some former members of the proscribed Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) with support from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Pakistan. The agency further claimed that LeT commander Azam Cheema had trained some of the arrested accused to handle arms and explosives and had also provided RDX for the attack.

But a closer scrutiny of the case by the High Court revealed a trail of cut-paste confessions, unreliable witness narratives, material evidence handled without care and vital call data records hastily destroyed~a case study in shoddy investigation.