Mumbai blast case falls apart after 19 years, 11 walk free

India Today

The Bombay High Court has acquitted all 12 men convicted in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts, citing lack of evidence, procedural lapses, and coerced confessions.

Transcript

00:00On July 11th, 2006, seven local train stations in Mumbai were shook by a series of explosions

00:11that killed 189 people and injured over 800.

00:19Back then, the police caught 12 people.

00:22Them.

00:23The Bombay High Court quashed the convictions of these 12 individuals on 21st July, 2025,

00:28saying that the prosecution utterly failed to prove the case against them.

00:32This is a case which is not even fit for conviction, let alone a death sentence.

00:36The evidence is extremely weak.

00:38As per the court, the evidence presented by the prosecution wasn't concrete enough to prove the accused guilty,

00:43with unreliable witnesses, questionable identification parades, and forced confessions extracted through torture.

00:49They took forced confession. They took a confession.

00:52They took a confession for another 10 days, for another 15 days, for another 1 month.

00:55Judges also highlighted procedural lapses, like some witnesses were not examined during the trial.

01:00As per the court, the prosecution was also not sure if crucial evidence like RDX and other explosives

01:05were properly protected till they arrived at the forensic lab.

01:09Based on these, the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act or Makoka Court's October 2015 judgment convicted 12 people.

01:16Five were sentenced to death, while seven were given life imprisonment.

01:19One of them, Kamal Ansari, died in 2021 from COVID in the Nagpur prison.

01:24While the remaining 11, who spent 19 years behind bars, are now set to walk free.

01:29The real question is, were the Mumbai police and ATS in such a hurry to close the case

01:33that they overlooked proper procedure and ended up jailing the wrong people?

01:37And if that's true, shouldn't those responsible be investigated too?

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