Seventeen Years Later, the Verdict Arrives in Silence, But the Questions Remain Unanswered
Seventeen years is a long time, long enough for a child to become an adult, for memories to blur, for narratives to harden, and for truth to become a matter of debate. And sometimes, seventeen years is all it takes for justice to reach the courtroom door, only to leave through another.
In one of India’s most politically and communally sensitive cases, the Malegaon blast case a Special NIA court in Mumbai acquitted all seven accused on Thursday. Among them: BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, who once stood trial for allegedly plotting and executing a bomb attack in a Muslim-majority town during the sacred month of Ramzan.
The verdict came with neither surprise nor satisfaction, but rather with the sort of quiet finality that India’s legal system reserves for its longest and most complicated trials.
The Night of the Blast: 29 September 2008
The incident that brought the name Malegaon into national consciousness occurred on September 29, 2008. A bomb, reportedly tied to a motorcycle, exploded near a mosque just before evening prayers, killing six and injuring over 100.
It wasn’t just the loss of life that jolted the nation. It was the idea that Hindu extremists, for the first time, were being investigated under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, a law usually associated with Islamist terror groups. For a country used to pointing fingers in one direction, the turn inward was unsettling.
The motorcycle was alleged to belong to Pragya Thakur, a sadhvi and political activist. The RDX, said the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), was supplied by Lt Col Purohit, who had access to explosives through his position in military intelligence. The prosecution claimed that a right-wing group, Abhinav Bharat, masterminded the plan as part of a larger ideological objective to create a “Central Hindu Government”.
And thus began one of the most watched and debated trials in modern India.
The Turning of the Tide
Initially investigated by ATS under the leadership of Hemant Karkare, who later died during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the case saw the early arrests of all seven accused. But in 2011, it was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) a move that would later become a pivot in the case’s journey.
In 2015, public prosecutor Rohini Salian alleged publicly that she was told by the NIA to “go soft” on the accused. A year later, the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet, discrediting key ATS evidence and declaring that the ATS may have planted RDX traces to frame Purohit. It also gave a “clean chit” to Thakur and others, stating that there was no direct evidence against them.
From that moment onward, the slow unraveling of the case seemed inevitable.
The Verdict: When Absence of Evidence Becomes Evidence of Absence
The NIA court judgment delivered by Special Judge A.K. Lahoti noted that the prosecution failed to prove ownership of the motorcycle by Pragya Thakur. The chassis number was “wiped” and never restored. The court said she had renounced material life years before the blast and had no known connection to the bike.
For Purohit, the court found no credible evidence that he brought RDX in Malegaon blast, stored it, or assembled the device. The idea that he attended “conspiratorial meetings” as part of the Abhinav Bharat conspiracy was deemed unsupported, as key witnesses had turned hostile.
In total, 323 prosecution witnesses were called. 37 turned hostile. Material evidence failed to stand the test of time. The Anti-Terrorism Squad probe, once celebrated, now stood exposed to questions of contamination and compromised integrity.
Even the court remarked that the crime scene was not properly barricaded, and contamination had occurred. The injuries initially reported as affecting 101 individuals were revised down to 95.
Compensation of ₹2 lakh was announced for the families of the deceased and ₹50,000 for those injured as if money could somehow erase the chaos of 2008.
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Justice, or a Carefully Forgotten Memory?
There is no doubt that Pragya Thakur is acquitted, and so is Purohit, and the five others. But what about the blast? What about the six who died, the hundred who suffered, the city that reeled, and the nation that once debated whether terror wore a saffron hue?
What becomes of a justice system when its cases become too old to prosecute and too political to pursue?
This verdict marks the end of a saffron terror narrative that began with shock and ended in silence. It relieves the accused, but does not absolve the state of its responsibility to investigate with fairness, rigor, and consistency.
In court, the judge said: “Terrorism has no religion. No religion can advocate violence.” But outside court, the larger society has already been nudged, bit by bit, into believing that even the idea of neutral justice is naive.
Epilogue: India Moves On, But Malegaon May Not
The courtroom has closed its doors on the Malegaon blast case. The legal machinery has pronounced its lack of findings. The verdict, though delivered, doesn’t erase the scar it leaves behind not on the victims’ families, not on the image of our institutions, and certainly not on the citizens who still remember what happened in 2008.
Seventeen years later, the question remains unasked in official circles perhaps because no one wants to hear the answer anymore:
If none of the accused did it, then who did?
