NIA Court Learns Witness Was Pressured to Implicate Yogi Adityanath by ATS

A main witness in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, who turned hostile later, has claimed that he was illegally arrested and compelled to implicate Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and four others linked with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

This discovery is made in the exhaustive judgment—over 1,000 pages long—handed down by special judge A K Lakhoti of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) court.

The judge took down Milind Joshi Rao's testimony, wherein he had affirmed that ATS officials had pressured him to frame Mr. Adityanath, RSS ideologue Indresh Kumar, BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Hindu guru Swami Aseemanand, and Professor Deodhar.

Rao also alleged that the ATS detained him illegally for seven days and threatened to detain him further unless he identified the five men.

The same blast took place on September 29, 2008, when a bomb planted in a motorcycle blew up in a crowded Malegaon market, around 300 kilometers from Mumbai, killing six individuals. The ATS initially conducted investigations before the case was handed over to the NIA, India's top counter-terror unit.

All seven accused, including Sadhvi Pragya, were acquitted on Thursday. The court cited an absence of "reliable and cogent" evidence to back up the charges.

Adding a new twist to the case, a former investigation officer asserted on Friday that the ATS was asked to arrest RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat as part of the inquiry. Mehboob Mujawar, who was a member of the initial investigating team, accused there being attempts to mislead the probe and levelled charges of framing him of filing fake cases against him when he protested.

"Mohan Bhagwat was to be made part of the case to give it the look of a saffron terror case," Mujawar told media. He further said, "There was also an attempt to carry out a fake investigation into Malegaon bomb blast but I wasn't prepared for it. False cases were being registered against me in this case but it was all cleared later."

The BJP has always insisted that the probe into the 2008 Malegaon blast was politically colored, with the intent to discredit right-wing leadership and defame the Hindu community.

In spite of these claims, the NIA court failed to rely on the testimony given by the witness and the retired officer.

The NIA said the explosion occurred during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan and just before the Navratri festival, indicating that the terrorists wanted to instill fear among the Muslim community. The trial, which commenced in 2018, ended in April this year. The prosecution called 323 witnesses in total during the trial but 37 of them turned hostile.

Although the court recognized that there was indeed an explosion of a bomb, it decided that the prosecution did not effectively prove that the explosive device had been positioned on the motorcycle.