Six family members of persons killed in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast moved the Bombay High Court on Monday, challenging a special court verdict acquitting seven accused, including Bharatiya Janata Party leader Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit.

On July 31, Judge AK Lahoti of the National Investigation Agency court acquitted the seven persons, holding that the prosecution had failed to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

On September 29, 2008, six persons were killed and around 100 injured when an explosive strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon in northern Maharashtra.

Thakur and Purohit were arrested later that year. Five others – Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi and Sudhakar Chaturvedi – were also named as accused in the case.

Thakur was a BJP MP from Bhopal between 2019 and 2024.

All seven were charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Indian Penal Code. The case was initially investigated by the Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad. In 2011, it was transferred to the National Investigation Agency.

The appeal filed in the High Court argued that the acquittal “was wrong and bad in law” and should be quashed, PTI reported.

The petitioners claimed that faults in the investigation could not be reason enough to acquit the accused. They submitted that the trial court judge should not act as a “postman or mute spectator” in a criminal trial, the news agency reported.

The appeal also argued that conspiracies are hatched in secrecy and are rarely supported by direct evidence.

During the acquittal, the NIA court had said that “conspiracy and meetings” had also not been proven in the case.

The court had held: “A grave degree of suspicion is established, but not enough to convict them, hence the court has given them the benefit of doubt.”

The appeal is likely to be heard by a bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale on September 15, according to the High Court website.

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