Malegaon blast case trial: 14 years on, 125 witnesses yet to be examined by court

14 years after a blast in Maharashtra's Malegaon, the trial in the case is still going on before a special NIA court and more than witnesses are yet to be examined.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has told the Bombay high court that it has reduced the number of witnesses that it has to examine in the Malegaon 2008 blast case. The agency had a list of 195 witnesses earlier and now has brought it down to 125.

The trial has been dragging on against seven accused, which include BJP Bhopal MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, army officer Lt Col Prasad Purohit and others. One of the accused in the case, Sameer Kulkarni, travels everyday from Pune to attend the trial and, since the trial has been going on for years with no sight at end, he had approached the high court.

In July, the NIA had said that it had a list of 218 witnesses and, at that time, there were 256 witnesses who were examined. Over the last two and half months, there have been 14 more witnesses.

Advocate Sandesh Patil, appearing for NIA, said that pursuant to the court’s suggestion, the agency had looked through their list of witnesses and realised that after 14 years of the incident, some of the witnesses had either passed away or were not traceable and so the figure had come down to 195.

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Further, the agency looked through their list and felt that they could let go of at least 70 more witnesses and still be able to prove their case against the accused.

It was following this analysis that Patil made the submission before the bench of Justices AS Gadkari and MN Jadhav that the NIA would now produce only 125 witnesses more before the trial court. So far, 272 witnesses have been produced in court by NIA in the Malegaon 2008 trial.