7/11 Mumbai Blasts: Eyewitness Testimony “Abnormal”; Investigation “Misleading"; Bombay HC Acquits All Accused

After 19 years in jail, twelve men who had been accused of carrying out deadly terror attacks in Mumbai in 2006 will walk free on Monday after the Bombay High Court said prosecution had utterly failed to produce any evidence against them. 

A Special Division Bench of Justices Anil S. Kilor and Shyam C. Chandak set aside a lower court order that had sentenced five of the 12 accused to death, and acquitted all the accused in what has been referred to as the ‘7/11 Mumbai Blasts.’ 

Once it decided that “the prosecution has utterly failed to establish the offence beyond the reasonable doubt against the accused on each count,” the court said “it is unsafe” to conclude that any of the accused have “committed the offences for which they have been convicted and sentenced.”

The 7/11 Mumbai Blasts Case

In a span of five minutes— 6:23PM and 6:28PM—on July 11, 2006, seven high intensity explosives ripped through first-class men’s compartments of seven suburban trains on Western line, leaving 187 dead and 829 injured. The prosecution had said the terrorists deliberately targeted crowded trains carrying people going to Mumbai’s distant suburbs. The blasts took place inside trains traveling between Matunga and Mira Road railway stations.

The HC was hearing the appeal against a special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court which had in September 2015 sentenced five of the accused to death and the others to life imprisonment for conspiring and executing the bombs. The appeal had been pending before the bench since June last year.

“Misleading” Investigation 

The court came down heavily on the prosecution for the shortfalls in its evidence presentation, pointedly noting that there appeared to have been a rushed investigation of the case to create a “false” idea of having solved it. 

“Punishing the actual perpetrator of a crime is a concrete and essential step toward curbing criminal activities, upholding the rule of law, and ensuring the safety and security of citizens. But creating a false appearance of having solved a case by presenting that the accused have been brought to justice gives a misleading sense of resolution,” the bench said.

Speaking on the evidence collected by prosecution, the court said that due to improper handling of the materials even the physical evidence presented, such as RDX, granules, detonators, cookers, circuit boards, etc, was unreliable and had no legal value. 

“Prosecution failed to establish and prove the proper custody and proper sealing, which ought to be intact till the articles were taken to (Forensic Science Lab) FSL,” the court said. 

The bench also deemed that books, maps and CPUs recovered by the prosecution were “not sufficient” and did not link the accused to the blasts in “any meaningful way.” The prosecution’s evidence was circumstantial and not sufficient to link the accused to the actual planning or execution of the bombings, the Bench said.

During the hearing, senior advocate S Muralidhar, Orissa High Court ex-Chief Justice, appeared for two of the accused who had been given life sentences, and argued that the investigation was “biased”. 

"Innocent people are sent to jail, and then, years later, when they are released from jail, there is no possibility for the reconstruction of their lives. From last 17 years these accused are in jail. They haven't stepped out even for a day. The majority of their prime life is gone. In such cases where there is a public outcry, the approach by police is always to first assume guilt and then go from there. Police officers take press conferences in such cases, and the way the media covers the case, it kind of decides the guilt of a person. In many such terror cases, investigating agencies have failed us miserably," Muralidhar had submitted.

Witness Testimony Unreliable

The prosecution had put in evidence the testimony of two taxi drivers who claimed that two of the accused travelled in their cabs to Churchgate station on July 11, 2006, the day of the blasts. However, the court said that the testimonies were “questionable” due to the delay in the witnesses coming forward. The court noted that the “drivers remained silent for over 100 days after the attack and only spoke to police on November 3, 2006.” Noting the delay in the identification of the accused, the court further set aside these testimonies as unreliable.

The court pointed out that the drivers did not have enough time to observe the accused properly and that they had no special reason to remember the faces after such a brief interaction.

The Test Identification Parades (TIP) was flawed and unreliable, said the bench. The identification was conducted by an officer who had neither authority nor followed procedure the court said while discarding the TIP.

The court also contested reliance on the memory of witnesses as the Dock identification (in-court identification) happened after four years, saying it was “abnormal” that the witnesses had managed to identify the accused after this length of time.

Coerced Confessions?

Bombay High court rubbished the confessions of the accused that were obtained by Mumbai police, saying that the statements appeared to be coerced. 

“The last plank of the evidence on which the prosecution has placed heavy reliance was the confessional statements. However, on all the tests relating to voluntariness and truthfulness of the confessional statements, the prosecution failed.”

On November 7, 2006, seven bombs had torn past the local defences.  189 individuals were killed and almost 820 innocent people were seriously injured in these explosions, which are often referred to as the notorious "7/11 Mumbai Blasts."

A special bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak, which heard the appeals of the State and the convicts against the conviction, for over six months, pronounced their judgment in the court.

Who were the Accused? 

The convicts, Kamal Ansari from Bihar, Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh from Mumbai, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui from Thane, Naveed Hussain Khan from Secunderabad and Asif Khan from Jalgaon in Maharashtra were found guilty of planting the bombs and sentenced to death by the trial court. Out of these, Ansari died in the Nagpur prison due to COVID-19 in 2021.

Tanveer Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Ansari, Mohammed Majid Mohammed Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Suhail Mehmood Shaikh and Zameer Ahmed Latiur Rehman Shaikh were sentenced to life imprisonment.