The Bombay High Court on Tuesday held lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, then a military intelligence official and another key accused in Malegaon blast case, was not entitled to be released on bail on the ground that the charges against him were serious and grave, inviting a punishment of death or life imprisonment.
Rejecting Col Purohit’s bail application, a HC Bench of Justice (Dr) Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi and Justice Ranjit More noted, “Each case depends on its own facts. In the present case, the offences charged against Accused are serious and grave, inviting even punishment of death or life imprisonment. Moreover, the trial is also likely to be commenced as the Special Court is already established for the said purpose, as per the order passed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court”.
“In our considered opinion, therefore, the trial court has considered and dealt with all these aspects in detail and effectively while rejecting the appellant’s application for bail,” the Judges observed.
“The discretion exercised by the trial court, therefore, does not call for any interference, as, independently also, when we consider the application of the appellant for bail, we find that he is not entitled to be released on bail. Hence, this appeal stands dismissed,” the Judges ruled.
It may be recalled that an improvised explosive kept under the seat of a Hero Honda motor-bicycle had exploded at Malegaon’s Bhikku Chowk, near Noorani Masjid on the night of September 29, 2008, leaving six persons dead and injuring 101 others.
In its chargesheet filed against 11 accused in a special court January 20, 2009, Maharashtra’s Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Tuesday charged that the blast mastermind and disgraced Army official Prasad Purohit, who was serving as lt. Colonel in the Army and was associated with Military Intelligence and Interior Terrorism (Insurgency Activities) when he was arrested on November 8, 2008, had floated an organisation in the name of ‘Abhinav Bharat’ on February 9, 2007. The accused No.4-Ramesh Upadhyay, accused No.10-Swami Amru-
tanand, Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pande and other co-accused, including some of the prosecution witnesses, were members of the said organisation. The main objective of the said accused persons was to turn India into ‘Hindu Rashtra’ called as ‘Aryavart’.
“They wanted to form Government in exile. They were dissatisfied with the Constitu-
tion of India and wanted to prepare their own Constitution. They had also planned to train the persons for ‘guerrilla war’. They had decided to eliminate the persons opposing their object of formation of Hindu Rashtra,” the ATS had stated in its charge-sheet.
While dismissing Col Purohit’s bail application, the Judges said that the pieces of evidence were sufficient at this stage to make out prima facie case against the appellant.