New Delhi: On 11 July 2006, the first class compartments of seven local trains catering to Mumbai’s western suburbs were ripped apart by powerful blasts within 11 minutes, leaving 187 dead and 829 injured.
Some 14 years on, there is no resolution to the case — the 12 men convicted by a special court in Mumbai five years ago continue to insist they are innocent and some of them have produced official and court documents filed by different investigative agencies in their defence.
They blame the Indian Mujahideen for the blasts.
The 12 were among 13 people arrested right after the attack and were charged with the Indian Penal Code (IPC) provisions relating to murder, criminal conspiracy, the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) 1999 and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) 1967.
The prosecution had argued that the plan was hatched by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Pakistan and was executed with the help of those belonging to the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
Nine years later, in September 2015, a special court in Mumbai found 12 people guilty for the blasts. In its 1839-page long verdict, it awarded five of these convicts — agreeing with the public prosecutor who called them the ‘merchants of death’— the death sentence, and the rest were handed life terms. One of the accused, Abdul Wahid Din Mohammad Shaikh, was acquitted.
Four of the life convicts have so far appealed their convictions in the Bombay High Court through advocate Ishrat Khan.
The necessary hearings for confirmation of the death sentences for some of the accused are also yet to begin in the high court. Death penalties awarded by trial courts need to be confirmed from the relevant high court, to which the proceedings have to be referred under Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
6 state agencies’ probes cited
In their appeals filed before the Bombay High Court, the convicts have relied on documents from several investigating agencies, including the Mumbai Crime Branch, NIA, Ahmedabad Police, Delhi Police, Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force and the Hyderabad-based Organisation for Counter Terrorist Operations (OCTOPUS).
One of the documents is a remand application filed by the Mumbai crime branch in 2008, seeking custody of a few alleged Indian Mujahideen operatives.
The application blamed the terror outfit and its operatives for several blasts, including “bomb blasts at Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Varanasi, Lucknow, Delhi and 7/11 Mumbai suburban railway bomb blasts”.
On this, the Maharashtra government in 2009 granted sanction to prosecute Afzal Usmani, an alleged IM operative, along with a few others under the UAPA.
A lawyer connected with the appeals, who did not want to be named, also referred to a supplementary chargesheet that the NIA had filed in a Delhi court against the Indian Mujahideen in February 2014. This was after the home ministry asked the agency to file a fresh FIR against the outfit and probe its involvement in various terror incidents in the country.
The chargesheet, accessed by ThePrint, also points to IM involvement in the Mumbai train blasts. “Investigation has established that the accused Asadullah Akhtar (alleged IM operative) was aware about the participation of the members of his group in the Indian Mujahideen in the Blasts at Sarojini Nagar, Delhi, in 2005, Mumbai Train Blasts in 2006, Gorakhpur Blasts in 2007 and UP Courts Blasts in 2007,” it reads.
By September of that year, the NIA filed another chargesheet, reiterating that the IM was involved in the Mumbai blasts.
“As stated by the accused Asadullah Akhtar in his statement u/s. 164 CrPC, the Mumbai Train Blasts (2006) were executed by IM operatives including but not limited to Sadiq Sheikh, Bada Sajid (Mod. Sajid), Atif Ameen and Abu Rashid,” the chargesheet reads.
The appeal filed by the accused in the 7/11 case points to these reports and claims that agencies appear to be aware that the Indian Mujahideen was behind the Mumbai blasts and not the men convicted.
“All these elite agencies of our country could not fall prey to the terrorist claims and could not come to the same conclusion that 7/11 trains blasts are the handiwork of ‘Indian Mujahideen’ and not the accused of the present case,” it reads.
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‘IM co-founder’s confessions’
The appeal of the convicts is also relying on the alleged confessions of Sadiq Israr Ahmed Shaikh, pegged as the co-founder of Indian Mujahideen.
A former refrigerator technician with Godrej, Sadiq was arrested by the Mumbai crime branch in September 2008.
His alleged involvement in the 7/11 blasts is not new; in fact, his name began being linked to the train blasts in 2008.
On 18 October 2008, then Mumbai DCP Vishwas Patil recorded an alleged confession by Sadiq, in which he is heard saying that “he, with the help of other IM members such as Riyaz Bhatkal, Arif Badar, Dr. Shahnawaz, and others had carried out several blasts at places like Delhi’s Govindpuri, Varanasi’s Sankat Mochan temple, Shramjeevi Express, Mumbai railway blast, on the instructions of Amir Raza.”
Then in another disclosure statement made in November 2008 before the Delhi Police’s Special Cell, Sadiq said, “I and Atif along with others conspired for blasts and prepared the bombs, which were kept in three local trains in Mumbai in 2006. I had kept a bomb at Rly station Churchgate, Mumbai on a luggage carrier.”
Sadiq’s confession was also videographed. Back in September 2015, The Indian Express had published some of these clips, in which Sadiq can be seen as explaining his activities leading up to the blasts.
“We had all gotten the Bombay local train time-table to identify the trains, then we bought bags and cookers. All five of us readied the bombs in seven cookers,” he is heard saying in the video.
“We left the apartment at 2 pm exactly (on July 11, 2006),” he added, “carrying the bombs we had made inside pressure cookers in bags. The bombs were set to explode four-and-a-half hours later, when we knew the trains would be crowded. I was the first to leave (around 4 pm).”
In addition, the Mumbai crime branch also obtained two more confessions from alleged IM operatives Mohd Arif Badruddin Shaikh and Ansar Ahmed Badshah Shaikh. In their confessions, accessed by ThePrint, both the IM accused claimed that Sadiq was involved in the 7/11 blasts.
The 7/11 convicts had called Sadiq, Mohd Arif and Ansar Ahmed as defence witnesses to prove the involvement of IM in the blasts.
Sadiq was, however, declared a hostile witness in April 2013, after he claimed that he was tortured and threatened to sign on the confession.
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‘I do not want to answer this question’
Despite Sadiq turning hostile, the lawyers for the accused had highlighted in the trial court the manner in which Sadiq answered certain questions.
During his examination by the defence lawyer Wahab Khan, Sadiq was asked what the reason was for the Mumbai Police to record his confession.
According to his deposition, accessed by ThePrint, Sadiq responded saying that “some officers of the crime branch had told me that they were in the ATS earlier and they know that the persons arrested in the 7/11 blasts are falsely arrested and that they know that they had not done the blasts, but I (Sadiq) and some other persons had done the blasts and they would implicate us.”
Khan nudged Sadiq on whether his alleged confession was a reflection of the actual events. Instead of denying this, Sadiq responded by saying, “I do not want to answer this question”.
Later, in the deposition, Sadiq said that he did not answer the question because he was “fed up with the repeated questions by advocate Khan Abdul Wahab in respect of the 7/11 railway bomb blasts case”.
The lawyer connected with the appeals told ThePrint that Sadiq’s confession can still be relied on.
“The evidence of a hostile witness is not wiped off the record. Both sides can still rely on it,” he said.
The appeals of the 7/11 convicts mention both Sadiq’s alleged confession and the documents.
“The learned Special Judge has completely lost sight of the fact that the confession of an accused Sadiq Israr Shaikh… and other documents prove that it had come in the investigation of Mumbai Crime Branch that Indian Mujahideen members were involved in 7/11 Mumbai train blasts (and not the present accused in this case),” reads their plea.
‘The IM method’
In its 2015 judgment, the trial court completely rejected the theory of the blasts having been committed by the Indian Mujahideen, asserting that Sadiq had “indicated his involvement on the say of Riyaz Bhatkal and one Atif with the intention of confusing the investigating agency and this was done as per the Al-Qaeda manual”.
Among other things, the court had noted that “it is the allegedly known strategy of the Indian Mujahideen to send emails to media houses informing them that a bomb blast is about to take place”.
The court then went on to say that while the modus operandi of Indian Mujahideen is to claim responsibility for their attacks, “no such thing happened in this case”.
“There was no email before the blasts and no one owned up the responsibility after the blasts,” it asserted.
The appeals, however, now point out that newsrooms across India received an email in November 2017, claiming responsibility for four bombings on behalf of an until-then unknown organisation called the Indian Mujahideen.
The four blasts included the 2005 Delhi serial blasts, 2006 Varanasi blasts, 2006 train Bombay blasts and the 2007 Hyderabad twin bomb blasts at Gokul Chat and Lumbini Park.
The email had also mentions the “causes behind Jihad (holy war) in India”, blaming the “violence against Muslims in India”. It said that the 2002 Gujarat riots “forced us to take a strong stand against this injustice” and also mentions the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
The appeal filed by the accused in the 7/11 blasts case submits that this email was in fact made a part of the chargesheet filed by the OCTOPUS force in the 2007 Gokul Chat blasts case.
The NIA chargesheets in the 2013 Hyderabad Dilsukhnagar twin blasts case, accessed by ThePrint, also mentions this email. A special NIA court had, in December 2016, awarded capital punishment to five IM operatives, including IM cofounder Yasin Bhatkal, for the blasts. Appeals against this verdict are currently pending in the Hyderabad High Court.
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Confessions, retractions and CDRs
The court’s 2015 judgment had convicted 12 accused, heavily relying on the confessions made by 11 of them, along with circumstantial evidence.
MCOCA allows confessions secured in police custody to be admitted as evidence in courts. This is in contrast to the Evidence Act, which says that any confession made to a police officer cannot be used as evidence against a person accused of an offence, as it presumes that all such confessions made to police officers are tainted with the vice of coercion.
The accused had recorded their confessions in October. Several of them tried to orally convey to the judge less than a week later, that the confessions were forced or wrong or were not shown to them, and all of them filed an application in November claiming that their signatures were taken on blank papers or that they were threatened and tortured to confess.
The trial court, however, opined that the accused had “volunteered” to make the confessions, and also rejected allegations of torture.
“I have already held that it is unacceptable and impossible that the accused who were duly represented by their advocates and who had been meeting their family members, did not complain even on a single occasion to the magistrates when they were produced from time to time,” it observed.
The appeals filed by the four convicts now reiterates this assertion that the confessions “were never voluntary… were obtained under duress, pressure and torture”. They assert that the accused were “brutally torture mentally and physically, taken to various units and police Stations, subjected to high-tech tortures”.
Besides this, the call data records (CDRs) of several accused allegedly contradicted the police version of events. In fact, one of the accused has claimed that he was in Kolkata when the blasts occurred, as against the police version of events.
While the ATS had heavily relied on the CDRs while seeking police custody of the accused, the information was not made a part of the chargesheet that was filed in November 2006. In fact, the ATS told the Bombay High Court in October 2012 that it had destroyed all CDRs of all the accused.
The lawyer connected with the appeals told ThePrint that the appeals will also challenge the rejection of the CDR evidence and will ask that an adverse inference be drawn from the fact that the police destroyed the CDRs.
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Looking at the conspiracy of jihadist AND ultra left wing radicals supported by journalists. HINDU’S realise how terror ” accused ” are referred to as “alleged accused ” . As if the the terrorist are victims and victims are PERPETRATORS.
Sick journalist are a unstable and hallucinating lot who hate HINDUS AND BELIEVE IN jihadist propaganda.
Muslims are the only minority in the world which plans and kills the majority and then they wonder why there is so much Islamophobia in the world.
Terrible living beings with no common sense, they are the worst of human kind.