HC acquits all 12 convicts in 7/11 Mumbai blasts case

The Bombay high court on Monday acquitted all 12 people convicted for the 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts that killed 189 people, overturning five death sentences and seven life terms in an order that lambasted the investigation for "cut-paste" confessions and said the prosecution "utterly failed" to prove the case.

- Karuna Nidhi

On an otherwise nondescript Tuesday evening in Mumbai 19 years ago, seven bombs exploded in local trains between 6.23pm and 6.29pm during peak commute, targeting hundreds of people making their way home on the city’s most popular public transit service.

The blasts killed more people than the 2008 terror attacks, and injured nearly 900, in what remains one of India’s worst ever such strikes.

Four months after the blasts, the Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad arrested 13 people. A local court in 2015 convicted all but one. But on Monday, the high court found glaring gaps in the probe and cleared 12 men, all Muslims, many of whom had spent 19 years behind bars and one died in 2021.

"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," said a special division bench of justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak, setting aside the 2015 convictions by the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court.

"The prosecution has utterly failed to prove the case against the accused. It is hard to believe that the accused committed the crime. Hence their conviction is quashed and set aside," the high court added in its 671-page verdict.

Victims of the blasts expressed dismay. "Justice got killed...the law of the land failed today," said Chirag Chauhan, a survivor who is now wheelchair-bound and a practising chartered accountant.

The Maharashtra government said it will challenge the acquittal in the Supreme Court. "I will go through the entire order. I have discussed with the lawyers, and the high court verdict will be challenged in the Supreme Court," said chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.