EYE OPENING JUDGEMENT

Just as some sections have raised a voice against the acquittals, there has to be a voice against those who messed up the investigation

- Jagdish Rattanani

Seven serial blasts ripped through Mumbai’s suburban train network between 6.23 and 6.29 pm on 11 July, 2006, killing 187 people and injuring 824. The ghastly crime against a particularly soft target, the local trains that ferry more than six million ordinary people a day in India’s financial centre along the city’s north-south corridor, shook the nation.

But a shocker of a different kind came last week, 19 years on, when a division bench of the Bombay High Court on 21 July ruled that the case in effect remains not solved and that the “true threat remains at large.” The HC acquitted all 12 accused in the case, including five who had been awarded death penalty by the trial court, and recorded strong findings against the police for grossly mis-investigating the case.

The division bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak began the 667-page judgement with the following words, “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.”