Anushka Mansharamani
Today a Special National Investigation Agency court in Mumbai ordered all accused of the blast to be present before the court during the next hearing of the case on 19th December.
On 29th December 2008, three bombs exploded in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Out of the three bombs, two bombs went off to Malegaon, a district in Maharashtra where 9 people were killed and the third bomb exploded in Modasa, Gujarat where one person was killed. Over 100 people were injured due to the blast and the blast that took place is known as the Malegaon blast.
There are 7 accused in the case out of which L T Col Purohit, Ajay Rahirkar and Sameer Kulkarni were present during the hearing on 3rd December 2020.
Member of Parliament representing the Bharatiya Janata Party, Pragya Thakur and retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay along with Sudhakar Dwivedi and Chaturvedi were the other accused in this case.
They have been alleged under Section 16 and Section 18 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for conspiracy and commitment of terrorist acts. They have further been alleged under Section 120(b), Section 302, Section 307, Section 324 and Section 153(a) of the Indian Penal Code for criminal conspiracy, murder, attempt to murder, voluntarily causing hurt and promotion of enmity of two religions respectively.
The court has therefore directed and made it compulsory for all the accused in the case to be present during the next hearing scheduled on 19th December, 2020.