Key Points

Both verdicts have been mindboggling and exposed how a motivated system can ruin the fate of people.

Though the Supreme Court has stayed the 2008 Mumbai blasts case verdict by the High Court, and victims in the 2006 Malegaon blasts are preparing for more legal fights, the cases have a numbing effect.

What appears to be true on the surface may, in fact, be far more complex beneath. We have heard about stories of schemes and plots, but this time, the same has been exposed through the court verdicts. The verdicts do not say this, but the inferences can be drawn. The judgements, through their reasoning and findings, point to systemic failures.

The 2006 Mumbai train blasts killed 187 people and injured more than 800 people. On July 21, the Bombay High Court acquitted 12 men who were previously convicted in the case. The court ruled that the prosecution had "utterly failed" to establish guilt and set aside the 2015 judgement of a special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court, which had sentenced five to death and the rest to life imprisonment.

But this raises critical questions: If the evidence was so weak, how did the MCOCA court issue such harsh sentences in 2015? If these 12 men were not involved, then who carried out the deadly blasts? If they were not involved, why were they arrested? Questions like these are being raised, but the answers are not there.

These are not just rhetorical questions -- they demand accountability. Shouldn't the investigators and officials who prepared the case be held responsible? There are more questions and doubts. Almost two decades after the blasts wrecked the economic capital of the country, will there be any relevant follow-up or fact-finding, or will it also end up one among those unsolved cases and ultimately become like, 'No one killed the 187 people and they just died in blasts which were caused by invisible people'.

If the evidence in the 2006 Mumbai train bombings was botched up, in the 2008 Malegaon case, the opposite seems to have happened. The police were accused of planting evidence, torturing witnesses, and becoming a tool in a wider political game, allegedly directed by influential politicians of the time.

The plot was exposed by no other than Mehboob Mujawar, a former policeman who had worked in the Maharashtra ATS.

He said that he was given orders by former IPS officer Parambir Singh and "higher officials" to arrest RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, and was given confidential orders regarding a few RSS men.

Mujawar has said that he was given 10 people to work with, got money from the Service Secret Fund, and there was pressure on him to follow the arrest orders, which he did not. "But I didn't act on it. They talked about 'saffron terror'. How could I have done something completely wrong?" he said.

He told the media that he received the orders within 15 to 20 days of the Malegaon blasts, and Mohan Bhagwat was going to be included in the case to make it appear like a saffron terror case.

After he defied, the ex-ATS officer said that false cases were registered against him in this case, but his name was cleared later. The NIA court, however, did not consider Mujawar's statement in its verdict, "because it was not recorded before this court."

But the court in its over 1,000-page judgment, has mentioned a witness, Milind Joshi Rao's testification that he was pressured by the Maharashtra ATS officials to falsely name Yogi Adityanath, RSS member Indresh Kumar, former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Hindu seer and former RSS member Swami Aseemanand, and Professor Deodhar in the case. Rao also said the ATS illegally kept him in custody for a week and told him he would be freed only if he named the above five people.

These details from the judgement give a chilling view of how far the system can be misused to build a pre-decided narrative -- regardless of its truth or consequences.

One of the accused in the case, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, spent nearly nine years in jail before being granted bail in 2017. He was arrested for allegedly masterminding the blasts, sourcing RDX from Jammu and Kashmir, and assembling it at his home. The Lieutenant Colonel had claimed that ATS had tortured him and forced him to take the name of senior BJP and RSS leaders, including Yogi Adityanath.

The Malegaon verdict reveals the frightening possibility of political plots being masked as terror investigations. Greedy politicians, driven by vote-bank politics and a hunger for power, may have manipulated the justice system to push false narratives -- risking innocent lives in the process.

The 12 men in the 2008 Mumbai train blasts, if proven innocent in the Supreme Court, and the seven people acquitted in the Malegaon blast case, are the test cases of the nefarious politician-police nexus.

While some political parties may use the Malegaon verdict to their advantage, the issue goes far beyond politics. The nation deserves to know: Who were the real perpetrators? Who crafted the "bhagwa aatankwaad" theory?

And most importantly, will those responsible be unmasked and punished to set an example?

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

- IANS