Having suffered nine years in jail for his alleged role in the 2008 Malegaon blasts, lieutenant Colonel Shrikant Prasad Purohit told the Supreme Court on Thursday that he has been caught in the “political crossfire” and has been incarcerated without any charges being yet framed against him.
Accepting the fact that as a serving Army officer he attended meetings of Abhinav Bharat, a right wing organisation whose members were accused of conspiring in the Malegaon blast, Purohit's counsel senior advocate Harish Salve said he had acted as an Army officer and passed on information to his senior officers about the group's activities.
A Bench of Justices RK Agrawal and AM Sapre reserved verdict on Purohit's bail plea seeking interim bail. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) probing the case said that Purohit was in touch with his senior officers in the Army and Abhinav Bharat with which he had links was not a banned organisation.
Salve said, "My client has got himself caught in political crossfire. He has been in jail for nine years but still he is serving in the Indian Army. From an unsung hero, he has been now called an incarcerated hero." Since the allegation against him is that of supplying RDX to Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, the main accused, Salve questioned that if she has been given a clean chit by NIA, what remained against Purohit.
Charges under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) were dropped against Purohit by the apex court in 2015 as no evidence was forthcoming. Even the Army's Court of Inquiry found nothing against him. Seven people were killed in a bomb blast on September 29, 2008, at Malegaon, a communally-sensitive textile town in Nasik district of north Maharashtra.