2006 train blasts: HC reserves verdict on appeal, confirmation of death & life terms | India News

Mumbai: After almost seven months of hearing appeals and confirmation references, the Bombay high court on Friday reserved judgment on the fate of five accused sentenced to death by a special trial court in 2015 for the synchronised train bombings of July 11, 2006, along with seven other convicts sentenced to life term.
The blasts killed 189 and injured 827 others, according to the trial court verdict in the 7/11 train blasts case.
Justice Anil Kilor and Justice S C Chandak, after an exhaustive final hearing that began last July, stated, “reserved for judgment”.
The convicts joined via videoconferencing from prisons across the state, including Pune’s Yerwada, Nashik, Amravati, and Nagpur. Naved Hussain Khan, sentenced to death by the special trial court for being a bomb planter, spoke for himself from Nagpur prison when HC gave the convicts an opportunity. He claimed he was “not involved in this case” and “did not even know these other people except one” prior to the arrests. He said he suffered for 19 years needlessly and, while people lost their lives, innocents can’t be hanged either.
The special MCOCA trial court Judge Y D Shinde found all 11 confession statements voluntary and none exculpatory. Special public prosecutor Raja Thakare, who conducted the trial and sought the noose for eight of the 12 finally convicted, also argued the confirmation case for the state. In criminal law, a death sentence given by a trial court needs to be first confirmed by the higher court to be an executable sentence.
The trial court verdict, while granting the death penalty to five of the convicts, stated, “It was mindless, cold-blooded, and wanton killings…” In HC, Thakare, with advocate Siddharth Jagushte, said the evidence was cogent then and now. For the 12 convicted men, the defence team included advocate Yug Chaudhri, Payoshi Roy, and senior advocates S Nagamuthu, Nitya Ramakrishnan, S Murlidharan.
The trial court conviction relied primarily on the confessions of the accused to nail them. The defence counsel before the HC argued at length, stating the data and confessions of 11 — recorded only after the stringent MCOCA was invoked to enable the use of such confessions — were “inadmissible evidence”, being “products of torture, fabrication, violation of due process, and falsehood”. Chaudhri argued that “within a few days of the recording of their confessions, all the accused complained of coercion and torture”.
The defence argued that Mohd Faisal Shaikh, the alleged mastermind of the 7/11 blasts, and four planters given death are silent on who planted the bombs in the Mahim and Bandra blasts shows the confessions were “not genuine”. But Thakare said the case stands strong, and the trial court verdict cannot be dislodged, and death sentences should be confirmed.