No relief for Malegaon blast accused Lt Col Purohit: Bombay HC refuses to stay framing of charges

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday refused to pass a stay order on the framing of charges by the lower court against Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case. The high court has asked the trial court to investigate the validity of the sanction for prosecution against Purohit under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). [caption id=“attachment_5110271” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The army official was arrested in 2008 and has been in jail since then. Screen grab from CNN IBN[/caption] The Supreme Court also refused to entertain Purohit’s plea seeking a court-monitored probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into his alleged abduction, illegal detention and brutal torture in the case, ANI reported. A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, Naveen Sinha and KM Joseph said entertaining the petition at this stage might impact the ongoing trial in the case. The bench, however, granted Purohit the liberty to raise his contentions before the trial court and said it is not expressing any opinion on his petition. Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Purohit, told the bench that the issue raised by Purohit in his plea has to be looked into. Since the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is seized of the matter, the agency can look into it, Salve said. The bench, however, asked him to raise the issue before the trial court. According to CNN News18, the Bombay High Court’s move comes after the trial court, on 29 August, had rejected Purohit’s plea to defer the framing of charges in the case. Purohit had filed a petition against the lower court’s decision to go ahead with the framing of charges in the case. His petition was asking for a stay on the proceedings until the court decides on the issue of the applicability of UAPA. As per a report from The Times of India, a bench of Justices SS Shinde and Mridula Bhatkar have set 1 October as the date of the final hearing in appeals filed by Purohit, Sameer Kulkarni and Sadhvi Pragya. Purohit is among the key accused in the 2008 Malegaon bombing case, in which seven people were killed and nearly 100 injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle went off at Malegaon, a town in Nashik district of Maharashtra, on 29 September, 2008. After nine years in prison, Purohit got conditional bail from the Supreme Court in 2017. With inputs from PTI