Written by Shaweta Sharma
Edited by Himanshi Shivani
It was 25 April 2016 when Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court dropped the charges against nine Muslims and freed them as they were wrongly accused of the 2006 Malegaon bomb blast.
The nine wrongly accused Muslim men were charge-sheeted for the September 8, 2006, blasts near a Muslim cemetery and a mosque during afternoon prayers on Shab-e-Baraat a Muslim holy day, when special prayers are held for the dead.
Nine of them were accused of setting off bombs in the textile town of Malegaon in 2006, which took lives of 40 persons, and 125 were injured at the moment. Of the nine, Mohammad Ali Alam Sheikh, Asif Khan, and Bashir Khan were found guilty in the July 2011 Mumbai train blasts while Shabbir Ahmed Masiullah died in a road accident in 2016.
The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) initially blamed the bombings on the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
On 10 September, investigators identified the owner of one of the bicycles on which a bomb was planted. On the same day, police released sketches of two suspects wanted in connection with the bomb attacks.
On 30 October, the first arrest was made of a SIMI activist Noor-Ul- Huda.
But these all suspects and arrested just turned out to be misconceptions and misunderstandings if nothing else.
The hatred toward Muslims in the Indian region and their involvement with SIMI made them prime suspect of the case and caused 8 years of prison.
At last in the NIA contradicted the ATS and CBI findings. And Suspicion shifted from SIMI to Abhinav Bharat, a Hindu group.
Then ATS arrested four persons namely Lokesh Sharma, Dhan Singh, Manohar Singh, and Rajendra Choudhary. On 22 May 2013, they were all charge-sheeted.
Hence the innocents were acquitted by a special court of Sessions Judge VV Patil after 8 years in 2016.
If we can't even expect from the Indian Judiciary to make an unbiased and fair judgment without racism clouding their decision, then who can we expect this from?
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