Bombay HC closes case against four accused
- Quaid Najmi
- Apr 22
- 3 min read
Mumbai: In a major setback to the prosecution, the Bombay High Court has quashed a Special Court’s order framing charges implicating four accused in the Malegaon 2006 bomb blasts case, thus effectively closing the trial against them.
A division bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Shyam Chandak allowed appeals filed by the accused - Rajendra Chaudhary, Dhan Singh, Manohar Ramsingh Narwaria and Lokesh Sharma - setting aside the Special NIA Court’s September 30, 2025 order that had charged them with murder, criminal conspiracy and offences under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
The high court’s ruling has discharged all the four appellants and halts the last remaining prosecution in one of the deadliest terror cases famous as the Malegaon 2006 blasts case. With this, there are no accused left facing trial.
Earlier, the court had condoned a 49-day delay in filing the appeals, noting they were statutory appeals under Section 21 of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Act.
While admitting their pleas in January 2026, the Court had observed that a “prima facie case for interference” was made out and stayed further trial proceedings in the Special Court.
Later, the case narrative went topsy-turvy after the NIA entered the probe. It concluded that the earlier (nine) accused were innocent and instead pointed to the alleged involvement of Hindu right-wing activists.
In 2016, a Special NIA Court discharged all the nine originally accused-arrested men on grounds of insufficient evidence. This ruling was challenged before the high court in 2019 and is still pending.
Purported Confession
The NIA’s conclusions in the revised case relied heavily on a purported confession by Swami Aseemanand in 2010, in which he allegedly claimed that an associate Sunil Joshi (since deceased) had told him that the Malegaon blasts were carried out by ‘his boys’.
Based on this confession, the NIA filed a fresh charge-sheet naming the four appellants, along with the deceased Joshi and three others absconding accused.
However, Aseemanand later retracted his confession and alleged coercion tactics. He was already in custody and accused in other blast cases like the Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif, and the court rejected his confession as ‘unreliable’, and acquitted him.
No Eyewitness
The lawyer for the four appellants argued in the high court that there were no eyewitness linking the accused to the terror strike and that the prosecution’s case was based on a confession that was already discredited by multiple courts.
He also questioned the legality of discharging the other (nine) co-accused while proceeding against the (four) appellants, pointing out that appeals against those discharge orders are still pending.
The four men were arrested in 2013 and spent six years in custody before being granted bail in 2019, with the high court noting at the time that they had been incarcerated without trial for an extended period.
With today’s ruling, the case has acquired a queer legal status: the original nine accused have been discharged, and the charges against the subsequent set of four accused are quashed.
While the discharge of the nine accused awaits the final legal scrutiny, till date, not a single conviction has been secured in 20-year-old blasts case.
Incidentally, the verdict comes barely a year after a Special NIA Court acquitted all seven accused in the other Malegaon 2008 bomb blasts case, citing lack of evidence, in which, among the accused were ex-BJP MP Sadhvi Pragnya Singh Thakur, besides certain army officers.
As far as the survivors and the families of the victims are concerned, the 2006 case has brought no relief despite prolonged investigations by multiple probe agencies, shifting theories, and an unfulfilled quest for fixing accountability.
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