AIMIM president, Asaduddin Owasi has accused the ruling BJP government at the Centre of going soft on non-Muslim accused in Malegaon blasts case.
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He said, “The u-turn by NIA is a joke, it is a travesty of justice and they are playing politics on the diktat of their political masters…In terrorist cases, if there is a non-Muslim (accused), the present political dispensation is going soft on them.
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Indian Express on Wednesday had reported that the NIA, two years after it told a Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court in Mumbai that it did not have any evidence to link nine Muslim men to the September 2006 Malegaon bombings, went back on its stand yesterday and opposed the discharge of the men of terror charges.
The nine men are Noorul Huda, Shabbir Ahmed, Raees Ahmed, Salman Farsi, Farogh Magdumi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali, Asif Khan, Mohammed Zahid and Abrar Ahmed.
They were arrested in 2006 for the Malegaon blasts that killed 37 and injured over 100. In November 2011, they were granted bail.
In 2014, when these nine accused filed a petition requesting to be discharged, the NIA had said that it did not find evidence backing the probes by the ATS and CBI.
The NIA took over the investigation from the CBI in 2011 and filed a chargesheet naming four accused, Lokesh Sharma, Dhan Singh, Manohar Singh and Rajendra Choudhary, but none of the nine men chargesheeted by the ATS and CBI.
(Photo- Indian Express)