7/11 Mumbai train blasts: Bombay High Court acquits all 12 accused including 5 on death row

The Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted all the twelve accused in the 7/11 train blasts case of 2006 nearly a decade after a special court awarded death penalty to five accused and life sentences to the remaining [The State of Maharashtra v. Kamal Ahmed Mohd. Vakil Ansari and Ors]..A special bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak observed that "the prosecution utterly failed in establishing the case beyond reasonable doubts".The Court found the statements of nearly all prosecution witnesses unreliable. According to the Court, there was no reason for the taxi drivers or people in the train to remember the accused after almost 100 days of the blast.On the recovery of evidence such as bombs, guns, maps etc, the Court said that the recovery was immaterial and not important to the case as the prosecution failed to identify the type of the bomb used for the blasts.One of the twelve accused had passed away in 2021 due to COVID-19.The Court had been hearing the matter since July 2024..The case pertains to the serial bomb blasts that occurred on July 11, 2006, in which seven bombs exploded in suburban trains on Mumbai’s Western Railway line, killing 189 people and injuring 824.Following a prolonged trial under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), the special court in October 2015 sentenced five of the accused to death and seven to life imprisonment..Those who received capital punishment were Kamal Ansari, Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan and Asif Khan. All were held guilty of planting the bombs. Kamal Ansari died in 2021 due to COVID-19 while lodged in Nagpur prison.The seven accused sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court were Tanveer Ahmed Ansari, Mohammed Majid Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Suhail Mehmood Shaikh and Zameer Ahmed Latifur Rehman Shaikh. The convicts then filed appeals against their convictions and sentences. In accordance with Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), the trial court also made a reference to the High Court for confirmation of the death penalty. The matter remained pending in the High Court since 2015. In 2022, the State informed the court that hearings would take at least five to six months given the volume of evidence. .After repeated requests for early disposal, a special bench was constituted in July 2024 to hear the matter on a day-to-day basis. Senior advocates S Muralidhar, Yug Mohit Chaudhry, Nitya Ramakrishnan, S Nagamuthu as well as advocate Payoshi Roy, appeared for the accused. They contended that the prosecution case was flawed and that the trial court erred in convicting the accused.On the other hand, special public prosecutor Raja Thakare, representing the State, supported the confirmation of the death sentences and maintained that the case met the criteria of the "rarest of rare" category..[Read Judgment]