In a landmark judgment, the Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted all 12 individuals previously convicted in the 2006 Mumbai local train blasts case, setting aside both death and life sentences issued by a special MCOCA court.
The verdict also rejected the Maharashtra Government’s plea for confirmation of the death penalties.
The division bench of Justices Anil S. Kilor and Shyam C. Chandak raised serious doubts about the credibility of prosecution witnesses and the process of Test Identification Parades (TIP) used during the investigation. The bench ordered the immediate release of the accused, provided they are not held in any other case, and directed each to furnish a personal bond of ₹25,000.
Finding merit in the arguments presented by the defence, the bench noted: “The prosecution utterly failed to establish the offences beyond a reasonable doubt against the accused on each count.” The bench further concluded, “It is unsafe to reach the satisfaction that the appellant accused have committed the offence for which they have been convicted and sentenced. Therefore, the accused judgment and order of conviction and sentence are liable to be quashed and set aside.”
Thirteen people were originally charged in connection with the case. One was acquitted by the trial court under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), while 12 others were convicted in 2015 - five of them receiving the death penalty and seven handed life sentences. One of the death row convicts died in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The High Court’s judgment comes more than five months after hearings concluded on January 31. The bench had heard the matter over six months, with more than 75 sittings held between July 2023 and January 2024.
The 2006 blasts, which struck seven western suburban trains on July 11, claimed 189 lives and injured 824 people. After an eight-year trial, the special MCOCA court had convicted the 12 on charges including criminal conspiracy, murder, terrorism, and organised crime under laws such as the UAPA, IPC, Explosive Substances Act, Railways Act, and MCOCA.
The convicted men had been imprisoned for over 18 years and lodged in facilities such as Yerawada and Amravati central jails. Following their 2015 conviction, they filed appeals that remained pending for nearly a decade.
The five men previously sentenced to death - Kamal Ahmed Mohd Vakil Ansari (Bihar), Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh (Mumbai), Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddique (Thane), Naveed Hussain Khan (Secunderabad), and Asif Khan Bashir Khan (Jalgaon) - were accused of planting the explosives.
Seven others - Tanveer Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Ansari, Mohammed Majid Mohammed Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Suhail Mehmood Shaikh, and Zameer Ahmed Latifur Rehman Shaikh - had been sentenced to life.
One of the original accused, Wahid Shaikh, was acquitted by the special court after spending nine years in prison.
The Maharashtra Government, represented by Special Public Prosecutor Raja Thakare, had sought confirmation of the death sentences, arguing that the evidence proved it was a “rarest of the rare” case.
Meanwhile, the convicts, represented by senior legal experts including S Muralidhar, Nitya Ramakrishnan, S Nagamuthu, Yug Mohit Chaudhry, and Payoshi Roy, contended that the prosecution’s case relied heavily on “extra-judicial confessional statements” allegedly obtained through torture by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), and that there was no credible evidence linking them to the attacks.
Defence lawyers maintained that their clients were wrongly implicated and had lost the most productive years of their lives in prison. They urged the court to set aside the conviction due to lack of evidence and procedural violations.