Mumbai practice blasts case: 19 years of injustice

A chilling story of torture, fabricated and flimsy proof, and a deeply flawed investigation by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) — these, and different such causes, have been said by the Bombay Excessive Court docket whereas acquitting 12 individuals accused of the 11 July 2006 Mumbai serial practice blasts.

The destruction of name knowledge information and unproven claims of visits to or guests from Pakistan have been key causes for the acquittal of the accused, regardless of the identical proof resulting in their conviction and sentencing by a particular MCOCA courtroom in 2015. After 19 years in jail, all 12 are again house, their lives and reputations irrevocably scarred.

The seven blasts, by explosives positioned in strain cookers, on trains close to Khar, Bandra, Jogeshwari, Mahim, Matunga, Mira Highway-Bhayander and Borivali stations, left 187 individuals lifeless and over 800 injured.

The excessive courtroom recorded its horror on the particulars of torture and third diploma, corroborated by medical experiences, positioned on document. Sajid Ansari, one of many accused, described how he was spreadeagled and given electrical shocks throughout interrogation. One policeman reportedly advised him, “I agree… you might be harmless, however have you ever not heard… a pissed off cat scratches the pole; you’re the pole and I’m the cat.”

One other accused Abdul Wahid Shaikh, who was acquitted in 2015, recalled — in a bit he wrote in The Wire — how “the cycle of police torture was so brutal that once they tortured certainly one of us, they made the remainder of us watch. We have been horrified even earlier than the torture started.”