Malegaon case: SC grants bail to Lt Col Shrikant Purohit 

The Supreme Court granted bail to Lt. Col. Shrikant Prasad Purohit on Monday, setting aside the Bombay High Court order denying him bail. The former Indian Army officer who was arrested in the 2008 Malegaon serial blast case has spent nine years in jail without trial.

A bench of Justices R K Agrawal and A M Sapre said they are setting aside the Bombay High Court order by which the bail was denied. The apex court said it has imposed certain conditions on Purohit while granting bail.

Purohit had moved the apex court challenging the Bombay High Court’s order dismissing his bail plea. On August 17, Purohit had told the apex court that he has been caught in the “political crossfire” and languishing in jail for nine years.

Seven people were killed in a bomb blast on September 29, 2008, at Malegaon, a communally-sensitive textile town in Nasik district of north Maharashtra.

During the investigation, police recovered messages which were allegedly sent by Purohit to another accused Ramesh Upadhyay. He was accused of stealing 60 kg of RDX from the army, which was allegedly used in Malegaon blast. He was also accused of funding and training Abhinav Bharat, an extreme right-wing group.

A special MCOCA court had earlier ruled that the ATS had wrongly applied this law against Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Purohit and nine others.

The 4,000-page charge sheet had alleged that Malegaon was selected as the blast target because of a sizeable Muslim population there. It had named Thakur, Purohit and co-accused, Swami Dayanand Pandey as the key conspirators. However, Thakur was given clean chit by the NIA in 2016.

With inputs from PTI