A tale of two verdicts

Difference in official reaction to Mumbai and Malegaon judgments is telling, and tragic

Alok Tiwari

During the last fortnight two major court judgments in terror cases have made headlines. The first was about Mumbai train blasts case of 2006. A series of seven coordinated explosions in Mumbai local trains within 11 minutes claimed 187 lives. It was among the biggest terror attacks in the country. The second was about Malegaon blast case of 2008, just a couple of years after the Mumbai blasts. Strategically placed bombs targeted the crowd coming out of a mosque. That attack took six lives.

A lower court in Mumbai case had convicted the accused and handed various sentences from life term to death. The recent judgment was pronounced by a division bench of Bombay High Court on an appeal by the convicts. In Malegaon’s case, it was the initial judgment from a special NIA (National Investigation Agency) court. Investigations in Mumbai case led to arrest of alleged Muslim radicals. Though the explosions were in local trains, the victims in this case were mostly Hindus. The Malegaon case probe led to arrest of a bunch of alleged Hindu radicals. The victims in this case were Muslims. Clearly, both attacks targeted secular fabric of the country and thus were particularly heinous crimes.

Both the verdicts exonerated all the accused citing insufficient and wrongly gathered evidence. Both the judgments castigated the investigating agencies for having done sloppy work. Both provided little solace or closure to the kin of victims. Both had dragged on for close to two decades. Both judgments once again opened the question that if the accused were not responsible for the crime, then who was.

It is not the intention here to criticise either judgment. It is the aftermath of those judgments, particularly the reaction of the establishment, that is troubling. In Mumbai’s case, the official reaction was of shock and dismay. Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis called the verdict shocking and vowed to appeal it right away. His government reached the supreme court within 24 hours and secured a partial stay on the judgment.

Ministers and present and past police officers too reacted with alarm. There sense was that the court had not appreciated the evidence properly. There was general tone of sympathy towards the kin of victims, and it was said that they were betrayed. They were critical of the justices who it was said had let down the victims. Those not part of the government criticised the police and demanded that actual culprits be brought to book.

None of that can be seen in reaction to Malegaon case judgment. Instead, the same chief minister Fadnavis was gloating that there could be no saffron terror. No expression of shock at how all the accused could be let off after years of investigations by state anti-terror squad and country’s premier investigation agency. Not even talk of an appeal, let alone running to the high court within a day. Instead, he indicated government will not go in appeal. The police officers this time seem to be remembering how they were pressured into roping even RSS chief in the case by the then political leadership. Nobody in power seems to be concerned about how the agencies could get everything so wrong or how court did not really appreciate the evidence. No sympathy for the victims and their kin and no outrage at them being let down. No minister or cop criticised agencies for bungling the investigation and called for bringing the real culprits to justice.

While in Mumbai case the general sense was that the high court had erred, in Malegaon case it was as if the judgment is gospel truth. It is not clear how anyone could take such diametrically opposite views within hours of pronouncement of judgment when nobody had opportunity of reading the specifics. While this is immensely disturbing and sad, it is not surprising. Rohini Salian, the former special prosecutor in Malegaon case, had spoken way back in 2015 about pressure on her to go soft on the case. After the judgment, she spoke of having plenty of evidence that had been presented even in supreme court but had vanished from the subsequent trial. The country’s ruling party fielded the main accused Pragya Bharati from Bhopal and got her elected an MP.

Is the difference in approach because now religious polarisation has become so central to our polity that it influences how even terror cases are treated? There is evidence of this happening all over the country, particularly in BJP ruled states. Despite repeated strictures from highest court in the country, ‘bulldozer justice” targeting Muslims continues in places like UP, MP, and now even in Maharashtra. The accused get different treatment in communally charged cases even in deciding their bail. Now it is seen even in the big terror cases.

Either you believe in courts, or you do not. The approach cannot be as per political convenience. The courts in both cases have flagged serious lapses on part of probe agencies. Torture to obtain confessions, their copy-paste wordings, improper gathering of evidence, lack of proper forensic work have all been marked.

In Mumbai case, the high court appears to suggest that police brought in wrong people in their eagerness to solve the case. In Malegaon case, the court sees grounds for strong suspicion on accused but believes the evidence presented was insufficient. Our system requires a crime be proved beyond reasonable doubt, which is how it should be. This often means the accused get the benefit of the doubt even if they were indeed the perpetrators. It can be disappointing for the victims and for the society at large. However, if this happens because of sloppy or, worse, biased work by the probe agencies then we all lose. It destroys faith in criminal justice system and takes us another step towards being an uncivilized, bigoted society.

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Aug 7, 2025