Jan. 13: A special court on Thursday granted permission to the Central Bureau of Investigation to reinvestigate the 2006 Malegaon blasts case in which 37 persons had died.
The CBI had filed an application seeking permission after Swami Aseemanand, arrested in Haryana, had “confessed” that Hindu radicals were behind the blast in which the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad had filed a chargesheet against nine Muslims.
A special investigation team will be formed by the Mumbai unit of the CBI to probe the matter. The minorities commission had taken Swami Aseemanand’s confession to the state home minister, Mr R.R. Patil, who had assured them that he would ask the CBI to look into the matter.
Swami Aseemanand had, under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, made a confessional statement before a magistrate on December 18 in Delhi. Accepting the CBI’s arguments, the Special MCOCA Judge, Mr Yatin D. Shinde, on Thursday granted the agency permission under Section 173 (8) of Criminal Procedure Code to reinvestigate the case.
“We need to conduct investigations into the blast following disclosures made by Aseemanand,” the CBI counsel, Mr Ejaz Khan, argued before the court. The move comes as a blow to the state ATS which had already filed a 2,220-page chargesheet in the case. The ATS had claimed that the bombs were assembled by two Pakistanis who stayed in Mumbai and Malegaon. One of them had been identified as Muzammil. However, Swami Aseemanand had told his interrogators that it was RSS worker Sunil Joshi (murdered later, in 2008) who were responsible for the blasts.