The two accused in the Ajmer Dargah bomb blasts case have got relief from the Rajasthan High Court on Thursday. The division bench of Justice Manish Bhandari issued the order of giving bail to the convicted, Devendra Gupta and Bhavesh Patel.
They were both serving life sentence after being convicted by CBI special court in March 2017. Advocate Manoj Sharma and JS Rana had filed a bail application for both of them in the High Court.
Rana said that there was no evidence against them and that they were convicted only on the basis of probabilities. It was argued in the case of Devendra Gupta that while he was getting his driving license made, the broker used his documents.
So it was thought that the SIM card purchased near Dargah, must have been bought by him, but the charges were not proven. It was also pleaded that the other convict Bhavesh Patel was convicted because his mobile was switched off on 11th and 12th October and that doesn't prove that he planted a bomb in the Dargah premises.
Upon hearing all the pleas, the judge adjourned the sentence of the two and issued the order of bail. Rana said that both the accused will come out of jail on Friday.
The explosion in the 13th-century dargah of Sufi mystic Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti on October 11, 2007, during Ramzan, had left three persons dead and 17 injured. The dargah was packed with devotees when the blast occurred at the time of 'iftaar' Four charge-sheets were prepared in this case.
Based on this, on March 8, 2017, the CBI court convicted Bhavesh Patel, Devender Gupta and Sunil Joshi, and sentenced them to life imprisonment. Sunil Joshi died, while Devendra Gupta and Bhavesh Patel were arrested in 2010.
The Ajmer dargah blast was the first instance in which the investigating agencies had found involvement of right-wing Hindutva organisations, including Abhinav Bharat, which were later suspected to be linked to several other blast cases.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) special court had already acquitted self-proclaimed monk and former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist Swami Aseemanand and six others in March 2017.