Mumbai train blasts case: SC stays Bombay HC judgement acquitting all 12 accused

The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed the Bombay High Court verdict acquitting all 12 accused in the 2006 Mumbai train bomb blasts case.

The court, however, said there was no question of bringing the 12 back to prison and emphasised that the high court judgement shall not be treated as a precedent.

A bench of Justices M M Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh issued notice to all the accused in the case and sought their response on the appeal filed by the state government.

"We have been informed that all the respondents have been released and there is no question of bringing them back to the prison. However, taking note of the submission made by the Solicitor General on the question of law, we are inclined to hold that the impugned judgment shall not be treated as a precedent. To that extent, there shall be a stay of the impugned judgment," the bench said.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for the Maharashtra government.

The Maharashtra government has assailed a Bombay High Court judgment acquitting all 12 convicts in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case in the Supreme Court on grounds, including that the recovery of RDX from an accused, was disbelieved on a "hyper-technical ground" that the seized explosives were not sealed with a lac seal.

The state government, in its appeal, has raised several serious objections to the high court's order of acquittal.

The plea has asserted that due procedural safeguards under Section 23(2) of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) were observed, including proper sanctioning by senior officers like prosecution witness (PW) no. 185 Anami Roy.

It said the high court overlooked the validity of these approvals despite no substantial contradiction in the prosecution's evidence.

On Monday, a special high court bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak acquitted all the 12 accused, saying the prosecution utterly failed to prove the case and it was "hard to believe the accused committed the crime".

Of the 12, five had been sentenced to death and seven to life imprisonment by the special court. One of the death row convicts died in 2021.

More than 180 people were killed when seven blasts ripped through Mumbai local trains at various locations on the western line on July 11, 2006.

The high court allowed the appeals filed by the accused challenging their conviction and sentences imposed on them by a special court in 2015.

The high court verdict came as a major embarrassment to the Maharashtra ATS which probed the case.

The agency claimed that the accused were members of the banned outfit Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and hatched the conspiracy with Pakistani members of the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).