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Malegon:
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has finally concluded that
the nine Muslim youths who were arrested and jailed in 2006 in
connection with the Malegaon blasts are innocent, a media report
claimed.
"In a U-turn from its previous
stand, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has submitted an
internal report to the NIA saying only the right-wing Hindutva
group activists arrested last year should be probed for the
blast", leading electronic TV channel NDTV claimed in its report
published September 13.
In 2009, the CBI toed the
Maharashtra ATS line and chargesheeted the nine Muslim men. The
agency retracted in 2010, when Swami Aseemanand confessed that the
blasts were the handiwork of a Hindutva group.
As a result of this error in the
terror probe, these nine innocent men had to spend five years in
prison. The Hindutva group, on the other hand, has not even been
named in this case.
A series of blasts struck
Malegaon on September 08 in 2006 ahead of Shab-e-Barat, a
Muslim festival when thousands of people were busy offering Friday
prayers at the Hamidia Masjid. Another blast occurred at nearby
Mushawerat chowk few minutes later. 32 people had been killed and
more than 300 were injured in the blasts, most of them being
children.
The Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS)
investigation of the 2006 Malegaon blast is receiving flak ever
since it arrested the Muslim youths in the attack on a mosque in
which the victims were all Muslims. Doubts were raised over the
investigation also by the families of the victims.
After much of
an outcry the state government had decided to hand over the
investigation to the CBI. But it was done only after the ATS filed
its chargesheet accusing the Muslim youths of masterminding the
terror attack.
The case took an interesting turn when Swami Aseemanand,
one of the accused arrested in Mecca Masjid and other blast
cases, admitted in his confession made before a magistrate that the
Muslim youths arrested in 2006 blast case were not guilty.
Following Aseemanad's confession,
some officers in the Maharashtra ATS had also suggested that their
could be errors in thier probe.
Interestingly, the Muslim leaders in
Mumbai and Malegaon claimed that the Union Home Minister P
Chidamabarm, Union Minister Sharad Pawar, Maharashtra Chief
Minister Prithviraj Chavan and other ministers have also confessed
in private that the Muslim youths were innocent and were wrongly
framed in the case.
After the admission by the NIA now,
it is still to be seen that how and when these Muslim youths
are discharged from the case.
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