Mumbai Local Train Blast: High Court Acquits All 12 Accused

Mumbai (The Uttam Hindu): On Monday, the Bombay High Court gave a big verdict in the 2006 Mumbai local train blast case and declared all 11 accused innocent and acquitted them. This verdict was given by the division bench of Justice Anil Kilor and Justice S.G. Chandak. A total of 12 accused in this case were earlier convicted by the lower court, out of which 5 were sentenced to death and 7 were given life imprisonment. However, the High Court acquitted 11 accused during the hearing, while one accused had already died.

According to sources, the final hearing of the case was completed in January this year, after which the verdict was reserved. The convicts had marked their presence in the court through video conferencing from Yerawada, Nashik, Amravati and Nagpur jails.

In this horrific bomb blast in 2006, there were explosions at seven places in Mumbai's local trains, in which 189 people lost their lives and 824 people were injured. In this case, a total of 12 accused were convicted by the Special Court in 2015, out of which 5 were sentenced to death and 7 to life imprisonment. Those who were sentenced to death included Mohammad Faisal Sheikh, Ehtesham Siddiqui, Naved Hussain Khan, Asif Khan and Kamal Ansari. However, the accused named Kamal Ansari died in jail in 2022 due to COVID-19.

The defence had alleged that the confessions recorded under the MCOCA Act were obtained by 'coercion' and 'torture', and hence should be dismissed as illegal. The state, on the other hand, tried to prove that the case was 'rare of the rarest' and justified punishing the culprits.

This verdict marks a new direction in the case and raises many questions, especially regarding the judicial process and the use of evidence in terrorism-related cases.