In an unexpected turn of events, the Bombay High Court on Monday overturned the death sentences and life terms awarded to a dozen accused in the infamous 2006 Mumbai train blasts case. A special court set up under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act had tried them for coordinating a series of bombings on seven suburban trains during the evening rush hour on July 11, 2006.
The closely-timed attacks across the city, designed to spread terror, had snuffed out 187 innocent lives. The BJP-led Maharashtra government has rushed to challenge the judgement in the Supreme Court. Mumbai has been a terrorist target for more than three decades.
As many as 713 persons were killed and over 2,000 injured in 14 incidents recorded between 1993 and 2011. Given the context, the state government was understandably looking to find closure on this cycle of violence.
However, the Bombay High Court has ruled that Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad had “utterly failed to establish the offences beyond reasonable doubt against the accused”.
The judgement notes that some of the confessions were extracted through torture, the forensic evidence was mishandled, and some of the eyewitnesses were either not reliable or were ‘stock witnesses’ also used in other criminal proceedings.
In one case, a witness who allegedly saw bombs being assembled remained silent for 100 days and was initially a suspect before changing his statement.
There is no doubt that the 2006 blasts were an act of terror and those behind it must be punished for mass murder. However, as the court rightly pointed out, the rule of law would be undermined if those innocent of the crime are convicted merely to create “a false appearance of having solved a case. This deceptive closure undermines public trust and falsely reassures society, while in reality, the true threat remains at large”.
The botched investigation itself should be looked at even as the hunt for the real killers begins afresh. A new investigation team should be constituted to collect watertight evidence—to the extent possible after all these years—and nail the culprits in a retrial.
Pursuing an appeal based on the current probe may be counter-productive. Action against terrorists responsible for so many deaths cannot be weakened by further administrative missteps.