Families of six victims of the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast have approached the Bombay High Court, challenging the recent acquittal of seven accused, including BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit. The appeal comes in response to the verdict delivered on July 31, 2025, by a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court, which held that the prosecution had failed to present convincing evidence and extended the benefit of doubt to the accused.

The blast, which struck a predominantly Muslim locality in Malegaon’s Nashik district on September 29, 2008, involved an improvised explosive device hidden in a motorcycle. The explosion killed six people and left over a hundred injured. The victims’ relatives, represented by advocate Mateen Shaikh, contend that the trial court’s reasoning is deeply flawed and that its judgment essentially reduced the court to functioning as a post-office for the prosecution, overlooking vital material.

The plea argues that minor procedural lapses—inevitable given the passage of time—were wrongly used to discard critical evidence. It stresses that terrorism cases often involve covert conspiracies that rarely leave direct evidence, requiring courts to adopt a nuanced approach. By disregarding this, the trial court, the appellants say, has compromised justice.

The Malegaon case was first investigated by the Maharashtra ATS, which filed its chargesheet in 2009, before being taken over by the NIA in 2010. In 2016, the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet, dropping the stringent MCOCA charges but continuing the case under the IPC, UAPA, and the Explosive Substances Act. The trial commenced in 2018 and concluded in April 2025.

The High Court is expected to hear the matter before a bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Ranjitsinha Bhosale, likely in mid-September 2025. The outcome could have wide repercussions, both for the victims’ families seeking accountability and for the political and legal landscape surrounding one of India’s most controversial terror cases.

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