Mumbai: In a significant judgment, the Bombay high court today, July 21, acquitted all 12 men who were earlier convicted and sentenced to death (five of them) and life term (seven) for “participating” in the deadly serial train blasts of July 11, 2006. The judgement came 19 years since the incident and the men have languished in jail through this time.
Only one person, Wahid Shaikh, was acquitted in 2015 after the trial court found no evidence against him. He too had languished in jail for nine years.
Wahid told The Wire that the high court bench, comprising Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak, fully accepted the defence’s argument that they were brutally tortured and their confessions were forcefully extracted. “We have maintained all along that not just me but all the other 12 men were falsely implicated in the case. We stand vindicated today,” an emotional Wahid said over phone.
The defendants in the case also worked as truth-seekers, reading the chargesheet closely, filing RTIs, collecting evidence that eventually helped build their case. “All this material came on record only because of the accused themselves,” recalls lawyer Payoshi Roy, one of the arguing counsels in the case. Both Roy and her senior Yug Mohit Chaudhry, involved in the case since the initial stage, argued on a everyday basis before the high court since last October to February this year.
“The real heroes were the trial lawyers. Their cross examination was outstanding. The high court has relied a lot on the cross examinations in its judgment of acquittal,” senior advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan, who was among the arguing counsels for the case, told The Wire.
The judgement copy that was made available around noon reflected Wahid’s words.
“Confessional statements were not found to be truthful and complete on various grounds, including some portions of the same were found to be similar and copied,” the 667- pages judgement stated.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.