After 5 accused in the Mecca Masjid blast case were acquitted by a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) Court on April 16, came the shocker… the judge who passed the order resigned suddenly siting personal reasons. Moreover, the NIA is unlikely to be able to appeal the acquittals given the wafer thin case it built against the accused. The shoddy investigation, failure to collect hard evidence and over reliance on confessional statements are said to be the prosecution’s undoing in the case.
Image: PTI
The Mecca Masjid Blast
On May 18, 2007, a cell phone triggered pipe bomb exploded in the Wazukhana or the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad killing 8 people and injuring 58 others. Nearly 10,000 people were offering Friday prayers at the time of the blast. Two unexploded IEDs were later recovered from the site. The explosions led to panic and also violent retaliation. Some members of the minority community went on a rampage destroying public property. The police came in for scathing criticism when it fired indiscriminately at them killing 5 people.
The HuJI Angle and Wrongful Detention of Muslim Youth
The Hyderabad Police conducted an initial probe, and pointed a finger of suspicion toward the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI). A man named Bilal, linked to HuJI was blamed for the attack. He was later killed in a shootout. The police reportedly detained more than 50 Muslim youth during the investigation.
A fact-finding panel with the state’s minority commission found that the youth were illegally confined and tortured by the police. The youth were all subsequently acquitted, and, as per the National Minority Commission’s recommendation, the state government handed out monetary compensation to them. In September 2013, the Andhra Pradesh High Court set aside the compensation paid to the youth.
Cases bounces from local cops to CBI to NIA
After the CBI took over the case, it filed a chargesheet against Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak Devendra Gupta and RSS activist Lokesh Sharma. They were said to be working with another former RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on December 29, 2007 in Dewas.
The NIA took over in 2011 and filed a supplementary chargesheet against former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activist and self-styled cleric/preacher Aseemanand, alias Naba Kumar Sarkar. They claimed he was a key player in radicalising and recruiting people for the purpose of exacting ‘Saffron vengeance’. Five people were arrested: Aseemanand, Gupta, Sharma, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar and Rajendra Chowdhry. Two accused–Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra–are still absconding.
Evidence vs Confessions
There was little evidence provided and the prosecution’s case was built entirely on confessional statements. Aseemanand, who was one of the main accused and who had also been implicated and later acquitted in the Ajmer blast case had confessed to his involvement in the Mecca Masjid blast in December 2010. By January right wing groups started claiming that Aseemanand was forced to make a false confession. In April that year, Aseemanand too retracted his confession saying it had been extracted under duress. The conspiracy charge that was based on call data records of the accused and witnesses who had attended meetings mentioned in Aseemanand’s confession. Most of the witnesses turned hostile in court.
The NIA alleged Aseemanand said, “Bomb ka jawaab bomb se dena hai,” in his meetings with other accused, but was eventually unable to prove this in court. The prosecution also relied on the comparision between explosives used in the Ajmer blasts and the Mecca Masjid blasts. However, in Aril 2017, a Jaipur court acquitted Aseemanand in the Ajmer blast. This further weakened the prosecution’s case against Aseemanand in the Mecca Masjid matter. Of the 226 witnesses sited, none apart from the official witness supported the prosecution.
Moreover, a red shirt suspected to have belonged to one of the persons who planted the bomb was recovered from the blast site by the local police. But this key piece of evidence never made it to the NIA when it took over the case from the CBI.
The Curious Case of Devendra Gupta
Devendra Gupta, a former RSS pracharak was named by the CBI as one of the first accused in the case along with Aseemanand. He was found guilty in the Ajmer blast case, where the NIA was able to prove in court that Gupta had cellphone SIM cards used to time and trigger the bombs kept at the Sufi shrine.
This is pertinent because SIM cards from this very set were used to trigger the blast at Mecca Masjid. According to the chargesheet, these SIM cards had been purchased by Gupta and his accomplices Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange under fake names from Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal. They were used to not only communicate and discuss the conspiracy but also as triggers for the bombs. In fact, a SIM card from an unexploded bomb from Mecca Masjid had match with a phone used in the Ajmer Dargah blast.
However, the NIA failed to convince the court of Gupta’s complicity in the Mecca Masjid case and he was acquitted along with Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar and Rajendra Chowdhry, on April 16.