By TCN Staff Reporter,
Mumbai: Two court developments in this first week of June clearly indicate that premier terror probe body National Investigation Agency (NIA) has lost interest in taking saffron terror cases to their natural conclusion, or innocent Hindus also, like Muslims, have been picked in terror cases, and therefore the probe agency is unable to procure evidence and charge sheet them.
On Tuesday (5th June), a special NIA court in Mumbai granted bail to Lokesh Sharma in the September 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case in which six people were killed and 100 wounded. The accused got bail because the NIA could not file a charge sheet in 90 days. Twelve members of the rightwing outfits, Jai Vande Mataram and Abhinav Bharat, were arrested for the blast which was probed by slain Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare. The accused in jail include Sadhvi Pragya and Col. Purohit.
“The NIA failed to file a charge sheet within the stipulated 90-day period. Hence, Special Judge Y.D. Shinde directed the accused to execute a bond of Rs.25,000, while granting him bail,” Sharma’s lawyer Aarti Bhide was quoted as saying by IANS news agency.
Sharma was first named by the NIA in the 2007 Samjhauta Express train bombing that killed 68 people, mainly Pakistanis. Sharma is the first accused to get bail in the Malegaon blast case. However, he will remain in jail in the train blast case.
On Friday (1st June), a Hyderabad court granted bail Bharat Mohanlal Ratheswar alias Bharat Bhai, one of the the accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid bomb blast case which had claimed seven lives during Friday Prayer.
According to The Hindu, the court granted the bail to Bharat after the NIA, which is probing the case, failed to file charge-sheet even after the expiry of 180 days of remand period.
The court asked Bharat to produce two sureties for Rs.10,000 each and stipulated that he be available for investigators as and when required, said B. Rajavardhan Reddy, counsel for Bharat.
After being released from the jail, he will be taken to Jaipur in connection with the Ajmer dargah bomb blast case, said the news report. The NIA had brought him to the city on a prisoner’s transit warrant in December 2011 from Jaipur for his alleged role in the Mecca Masjid blast case.
The obvious question is: Why casual attitude in prosecuting saffron terrorists in blasts which claimed several human lives, or innocent Hindus, like hundreds of innocent Muslims, have been arrested for terror blasts while the real culprits are on run?
Since November 2011, more than a dozen Muslim youths have been picked by Karnataka ATS and Delhi Special Cell – almost all of them belong to Darbhanga and Madhubani district in Bihar – for Chinnaswamy Stadium blast of 2010 and Jama Masjid shootout of the same year. Some people were wounded in the two attacks, none was killed. Villagers and family members say their sons are innocent and have nothing to do with terror attack.
The recent detention/arrest for two attacks is from Saudi Arabia. Darbhanga engineer Fasih Mahmood was picked on 13th May but has not yet been produced in court. Meanwhile, CBI has got Interpol issued warrant against Fasih on the request of Karnataka and Delhi Police for the stadium and Jama Masjid shooting respectively.