Branded terrorists, tortured into confessions, and imprisoned for years – 12 men convicted in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case were acquitted on Monday by the Bombay High Court, which set aside a trial court’s judgment that had sentenced five of them to death and the others to life.

In fact, the real perpetrators of the terror act, which killed 189 people and injured over 800, remain unidentified, according to the court, which ripped into the investigation’s claims.

“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…This deceptive closure undermines public trust and falsely reassures society, while in reality, the true threat remains at large,” said Justice Anil S Kilor of the high court said while delivering the verdict. 

A bench comprising Justice Kilor and Justice Shyam Chandak set aside a 2015 court order that convicted these 12 accused – the accused had later moved the high court. The 12 men acquitted on Monday are: Kamal Ansari, Tanveer Ansari, Mohammad Faisal Shaikh, Ehtesham Siddique, Mohammad Majid, Shaikh Mohammad Ali Alam Shaikh, Sajid Ansari, Muzammil Shaikh, Suhail Shaikh, Zameer Shaikh, Naveed Khan, and Asif Khan.

A total of 13 individuals were originally charged in the case. Wahid Shaikh was acquitted earlier in 2015 after spending nine years in prison.  

Notably, Kamal Ansari, one of the five initially sentenced to death, died of Covid in Nagpur Central Jail in 2021, before he could be exonerated.

Three shaky pillars on which case stood

The court scrutinised the prosecution's case, which primarily rested on three pillars of evidence: eyewitness testimonies, recoveries, and confessional statements. All three, the bench concluded, were riddled with serious flaws.

In its analysis of eyewitness accounts, the court grouped witnesses into four categories: taxi drivers who allegedly transported the accused, witnesses who claimed to have seen the bombs being planted, a witness to the bomb assembly, and a witness to the alleged conspiracy

Taxi drivers Santosh Kedar Singh and Rajesh Satpute, who allegedly drove two accused to Churchgate station, were found unreliable. They remained silent for months after the incident, and their test identification parades were invalid as the officer conducting them was not authorised. Their dock identifications came over four years later, with no convincing explanation for their recollection of the accused.

Witnesses who claimed to have seen bombs being planted – Subhas Nagasekar, Kishore Popatlal Shah, Devendra Lahu Patil, and Vishal Kishore Parmar – were similarly discredited. Their statements were recorded over 100 days after the blasts, and the identification parades they participated in were ruled inadmissible.

Parmar, notably, was described as a “stock witness” – someone routinely used as a panch or witness in multiple unrelated cases. The court noted he had acted as a panch in four other crimes, three of which were investigated by DCB CID, and two by Police Inspector Vasant Tajne, a key figure in the train blasts probe.

Devendra Patil, another witness, claimed to have seen two men board a train with a black bag, but remained silent for over 100 days. He could not provide any credible reason for his presence on that train and gave vague explanations about a job meeting related to customs, without naming the employer or the office.

The testimony of Amar Sardar Khan, who allegedly witnessed the bomb assembly, was found inconsistent. He changed his version during cross-examination and referenced another person who was never produced in court.

Prosecution witness Mohammad Alam, who claimed to have overheard conspiratorial discussions, lacked clarity and failed to recall basic details.

The court also noted that five injured passengers, whose statements were recorded shortly after the blasts under Section 161 of the CrPC, were never called to testify or asked to identify suspects, despite allegedly seeing the bombs being placed.

Except for Kishore Shah, all other key prosecution witnesses recorded their statements more than 100 days after the attack – an abnormal delay that seriously undermined the credibility of their claims. Shah himself was not called for an identification parade until four months after the first arrests, which began on July 20, 2006.

The court emphasised that these identifications – made in court after more than four years – needed to be supported by special circumstances that would justify the witness’s memory. None were provided.

Questionable evidence

On the second plank – material recoveries – the court found glaring shortcomings. Items such as RDX, detonators, and circuit boards were recovered without clear evidence of chain of custody or proper sealing. The type of bomb used in the blasts was never conclusively established, making these technical recoveries irrelevant. 

Other seized items such as books, maps, and CPUs were considered insufficient to establish the accused’s involvement.

The final pillar – the confessional statements – was dismissed as both inadmissible and unreliable.

The court found that the mandatory safeguards under MCOCA were not followed: prior approval was missing, some confessions were identical and clearly copied, certificates were not produced, and documentation showed glaring inconsistencies.

The defence also successfully argued that torture was used to extract these statements. The bench accepted this contention, citing signs of coercion and physical abuse.

“Confessional statements were not found to be truthful and complete on various grounds…some portions of the same were found to be similar and copied. The accused succeeded in establishing the fact of torture inflicted on them to extort confessional statements, etc.”

Moreover, the court noted that the prosecution failed to provide call detail records, and agreed with the defence's argument that this withheld evidence hampered a fair trial. “In these circumstances, having held that the prosecution has utterly failed to establish the offence beyond the reasonable doubt against the accused on each count, it is unsafe to reach the satisfaction that the appellants/accused have committed the offences for which they have been convicted and sentenced. Therefore, the impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence is liable to be quashed and set aside.”

Newslaundry had earlier detailed how Wahid Shaikh continues to be a prisoner of suspicion despite being acquitted twice. Read his story here. This was made possible by those who contributed to our investigative project on police excesses.

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