The Special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court on Friday has held 12 of the 13 accused arrested in 2006 serial train blast case guilty under UAPA, damage to public property, Railways act, Explosives Substances Act and the IPC. However, the one acquitted has been cleared of all the charges. The court will decide on the sentencing on Monday.
On July 11, 2006, a series of seven blasts was carried out over a period of 11 minutes on suburban trains in Mumbai, claiming 187 lives. In the last nine years, the case witnessed countless twists and turns. In fact, the prosecution dropped many of its theories that it had relied on initially.
Defence advocates said, “Earlier, the prosecution had claimed that some people, who looked Kashmiri, had visited a shop to buy pressure cookers to put the explosives in. None of the arrested accused, however, looked Kashmiri. So they dropped the pressure cooker theory and said the accused had used a rexene bag.”
According to the police, highly sophisticated explosives had ripped through the first-class general compartments of seven suburban trains, all headed towards distant western/northern suburbs. Two of the blasts – in Mahim and Borivali – took place while the trains were nearing the stations. The remaining took place in trains moving away from the platforms. The explosions were so powerful that they ripped the double-layered steel roofs and sides of each of the seven compartments, throwing injured and dead passengers out.
At Mahim and Borivali stations, apart from the passengers in the compartment, the explosions killed and injured people waiting on the platforms and even those travelling by trains in opposite directions. A few panicked passengers had jumped off the trains on hearing the explosions, only to get killed under the trains on the tracks.
The quantum of punishment will be announced on September 14, Monday, by the judge after hearing arguments of the both sides.
