Mumbai: Nearly 17 years after a blast ripped through a chowk in the otherwise quiet town in Maharashtra’s Nashik, a special NIA court here is set to pronounce its verdict in the 2008 Malegaon blast case. From the arrest of saffron-clad Pragya Singh Thakur to turf wars between government agencies, the case saw more than its fair share of twists and turns.
With the special NIA court that began hearing arguments daily from July 2024 now set to pronounce its verdict, ThePrint looks at the case and how it unfolded over the decades.
On 29 September, 2008, around 9.35 pm during the holy month of Ramazan and the eve of Navratri, explosives hidden in an LML Freedom motorcycle went off opposite Shakil Goods Transport Company in Malegaon. Six people were killed and more than 100 injured.
In the aftermath of the blast, the initial probe was carried out by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and its chief, the late Hemant Karkare. He traced the motorcycle used in the blast to Surat, and later to Pragya Singh Thakur, a former Madhya Pradesh Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activist. She was arrested in October 2008.
It was under Karkare that raids in Pune, Nashik, Indore and Bhopal led investigators to an alleged Hindu extremist based in Indore. The trail then took them to an Army officer, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, and retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay, who were arrested on 4-5 November 2008. However, Karkare was killed in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
During the investigation, ATS found alleged links between the accused and a Hindu fundamentalist group, Abhinav Bharat, as well as a self-proclaimed seer named Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey. ATS investigators alleged that the accused conducted a demonstration of explosives in a jungle near Pune, although defence lawyers argued that no witness testimony from local villagers was presented to support this claim.
Subsequently, on 20 January, 2009, a chargesheet of 4,528 pages was filed under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Explosive Substances Act.
In July 2009, the MCOCA charges were dropped only to be reinstated by the Bombay High Court a year later.
In December 2010, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested a self-proclaimed monk, Naba Kumar Sarkar, also known as Aseemanand, in connection with the case.
Aseemanand, according to news reports at the time, allegedly confessed before a magistrate that the Malegaon blasts of 2006 and 2008 were carried out by radical Hindu groups as “revenge against jihadi terrorism”. He said the plan to target Muslims was hatched by a group led by one-time RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi. He also claimed the group was behind the Samjhauta Express, Ajmer Dargah and Mecca Masjid blasts of 2007.
But Aseemanand subsequently retracted his statement and has now been acquitted of all charges.
A supplementary chargesheet was filed on 21 April, 2011, before the special MCOCA court in Mumbai, in which the ATS named 14 accused—Thakur, Purohit, Upadhyay, Dwivedi, Shivnarayan Kalsangra, Shyam Sahu, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay alias Raja Rahirkar (treasurer of Abinav Bharat), Rakesh Dhawade, Jagdish Mhatre, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Pravin Takalki, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange.
In April 2011, the Centre transferred the Malegaon (2006 and 2008), Mecca Masjid (2007) and Ajmer Dargah (2007) blast cases to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The agency had been investigating the Samjhauta Express blast case since 2010.
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NIA takes over
The NIA, while investigating, alleged that the Malegaon blasts were carried out by a Hindu fundamentalist module led by Sunil Joshi and Pragya Singh Thakur.
Joshi was murdered on 29 December, 2007, barely a few hundred metres from his rented accommodation in Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas.
The agency also alleged that Purohit knew Pragya Thakur and allegedly played a key logistics role in the blasts. The role of Purohit, who was associated with Military Intelligence and Anti-Terrorism/Insurgency activities, in the entire operation is key.
During the investigation, NIA said he supposedly bragged to a witness and had shown him explosive RDX, which he is alleged to have obtained from an Army operation in Kashmir.
Purohit applied for bail in the high court in 2011, but his request was denied.
While denying him bail, the high court document noted that Ajay Rahirkar, Pragya Singh Thakur, Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi, also known as Shankaracharya, and one Rakesh Dhawade formed an organisation known as the Abhinav Bharat Trust in Pune in 2006 with headquarters at Ajay Rahirkar’s address. It was registered on 9 February, 2007. They allegedly took an oath to strive to turn India into a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ called ‘Aryawart’.
But in 2012, the Supreme Court extended its order restraining the NIA from interrogating Purohit and Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi till further directions. The NIA was conducting its investigation when the government at the Centre changed in 2014 and the Narendra Modi-led BJP government came to power for the first time.
In 2015, Rohini Salian, special public prosecutor in the case, said she had been under pressure from the NIA to go “soft” in the case over the past year since “the new government came to power”. She said she got a call from an NIA officer asking her to come over to speak with her. However, the NIA denied these claims.
After nearly five years of investigation, in 2016, NIA filed its chargesheet, but it absolved Pragya Singh Thakur and prosecuted Purohit, with the caveat that the evidence was weak.
The NIA even dropped charges under MCOCA against all accused, and described Karkare’s investigation as flawed. This was a part of the supplementary chargesheet filed by NIA, listing shortcomings in the ATS investigation, including talk of the use of “torture” by the ATS to allegedly extract confessional statements from the accused.
“ATS Mumbai invoked MCOCA on the basis of the involvement of accused Rakesh Dhawade in the previous two blast cases i.e. Parbhani and Jalna, in which the concerned courts had taken cognisance. The way and circumstances in which the ATS invoked the provisions of MCOCA in this case becomes questionable,” the NIA chargesheet said.
As far as Thakur was concerned, according to the ATS charge sheet filed in 2011, Thakur, who allegedly owned the motorcycle used in the blast, was suspected to be part of most meetings of the accused from 2006 onward, during which plans to target Muslim-majority areas were discussed.
ATS claimed meetings about the 2008 Malegaon blast took place from January of that year at various locations including Faridabad, Bhopal, Kolkata, Jabalpur, Indore and Nashik.
At one such meeting in Bhopal on April 11, 2008, Thakur was allegedly tasked with finding the men to execute the bombing. These men were Sunil Joshi, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange, the chargesheet said.
Initially, Thakur was charged in the case because the motorcycle used in the blast was in her name. However, in the NIA chargesheet, it was claimed that the bike was in Thakur’s name, but was being used by another accused, Kalsangra, for two years before the blast.
He paid for its repairs and maintenance, the NIA said.
Following the chargesheet in which Thakur was given a clean chit, she was granted bail by the NIA special court in April 2017. Purohit was granted bail in August 2017.
However, it did not accept Thakur’s acquittal by NIA, and in December 2017, ordered that both Purohit and Thakur face trial under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
While framing charges, special judge S.D. Tekale acknowledged there was “no direct evidence regarding discussion of causing bomb blast at Malegaon amongst the accused persons except in the Bhopal meeting”.
But the court also noted that witnesses had retracted statements in which they said there was a discussion about carrying out a bomb blast at Malegaon in the Bhopal meeting.
However, relying on a top court judgment in a case involving Nalini, who was convicted of being part of the plot to assassinate former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the judge said that “conspiracy generally is hatched in private or in secrecy”.
“It is rarely possible to establish a conspiracy by direct evidence. Usually, both i.e. existence of the conspiracy and its objects have to be inferred from the circumstances and the conduct of the accused. Tone of the discussion shows that they want to create Hindu Rashtra excluding the Muslims and Christians. In the said meeting view was expressed to create threat against Muslims and Christians by striking them,” the judge said.
“On this background there is involvement of LML Freedom motorcycle belonging to accused No. 1 Pragya Singh Thakur in the bomb blast at Malegaon,” the judge said.
Adding, “There are also certain statements made by the accused No. 9 amounting to extra-judicial confession and by accused No. 1 indicating her knowledge about involvement of her motorcycle in the bomb blast.”
During the course of the investigation and hearing, more than 300 prosecution witnesses were heard, of whom over 35 turned hostile.
For instance, one of the witnesses who had previously, in his statement to the Maharashtra ATS, allegedly said that one absconding accused had met Pragya Thakur on multiple occasions and that he had seen the absconding accused riding a motorcycle, which allegedly belonged to Thakur. But in March 2023, he retracted his statement.
Another witness had earlier claimed to have known Thakur but later denied and retracted his statement given to the ATS.
The case has been going on since 2018 at a special sessions court where charges were framed against seven people under various sections of the IPC and UAPA.
Meanwhile, in 2019, BJP fielded Pragya Thakur from the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat against Digvijaya Singh, and she won. The party decided against fielding her from the seat in 2024.
During the trial, since Thakur had been out on bail, she was the one most inconsistent in attending hearings. She was even issued warnings by the court on multiple occasions.
The phase involving prosecution witnesses was completed in September 2023. The final hearing of the arguments started in July 2024, with the court hearing arguments from the prosecution and defence on an almost daily basis until 19 April, 2025.
In the first week of April, special NIA court judge A.K. Lahoti was posted to Nashik in the annual general transfer of district judges, days before the court was likely to reserve the verdict. The transfer order for Lahoti and other judges, issued by the registrar general of Bombay HC, was to come into effect when the courts reopened after summer vacation on 9 June. But he was later given an extension until 31 July to complete the trial.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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