^ More important. URL of the above is http://dailypioneer.com/192793/MCOCA-charg...ol-Purohit.html
http://dailypioneer.com/192996/MCOCA-charg...-to-Pragya.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->FRONT PAGE | Saturday, August 1, 2009 | Email | Print |
<b>MCOCA charges donât stick to Pragya</b>
TN Raghunatha | Mumbai
<b>Lt Col Purohit, nine others also free of stringent Act</b>
In a major jolt to the Maharashtraâs Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), a special trial court on Friday dropped the charges under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) invoked against all 11 accused in the September 28, 2008 Malegaon blasts case, including Army officer Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Dayanand Pandey alias Sudhakar Dhariwedi.
(Sudhakar is his real birth name, Sudhakar Dhar. But the name of "Dayanand Pandey" has nothing to do with Swami Amritananda Dev Tirtha.)
In a ruling that vindicated the stand taken by the defence lawyers that the ATS had wrongly applied MCOCA against the accused, designated Special MCOCA court Judge YB Shinde said none of the accused was part of an organised crime syndicate and no one had more than one chargesheet filed against him or her â which is a pre-requisite for invoking the MCOCA provisions against Sadhvi Pragya, Lt Col Purohit and other accused in the case.
As a consequence of the dropping of the MCOCA charges against the 11 accused, the Malegaon blasts case will now be heard at a regular sessions court at Nashik. Now that they will be tried under various sections of Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Explosive Substances Act, the accused can look forward to getting bail in the case - a thing that was not happening as long as they were saddled with the MCOCA charges.
Apart from Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya and Dayanand Pandey, the other accused against whom the MCOCA charges have been dropped are: Abhinav Bharat activist Sameer Kulkarni, Shivnarayan Kalsangra, Shyam Sahu, former army officer Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Rakesh Dhawde, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Jagdish Mhatre.
The Malegaon blasts, it may be recalled, had claimed six lives and left 101 others injured on the night of September 29, 2008.
Fridayâs development has also embarrassed the Congress-led DF Government which used the Malegaon blasts case to pillory the BJP-led Opposition in the run-up to the recent Lok Sabha poll.
<b>Maharashtra Minister of State for Home Naseem Khan sought to play down the import of the special court ruling, by saying that the State Government would challenge the ruling in the Bombay High Court within next four weeks.</b>
The special court's ruling dropping MCOCA charges against Sadhvi Pragya, Purohit and other accused comes close on the heels of an order by a Parbhani fast track court, discharging Rakesh Dhawade, one of the 11 arrested in the Malegaon blasts case, from the 2003 Purna blast case in Parbhani district for want of adequate evidence.
Dubbing the special courtâs ruling as a âslap on the faceâ of the ATS officials who investigated the Malegaon blasts case, Purohitâs lawyer Shrikant Shevde told The Pioneer: âIt has now been proved beyond doubt that the ATS had misused the provisions of MCOCA to bracket them with terrorists and gangsters belonging to the organised crime syndicates. <b>From what the ATS officials have done in the Malegaon blasts case, it is high time that powers vested with him to invoke the provisions of MCOCA should be taken away from them.â </b>
As if to buttress its case, the ATS â when it filed a 4,528-page chargesheet before the MCOCA court on January 20, 2009 â had among other things <b>claimed</b> that Purohit's main aim was to establish âHindu Rashtraâ for which he was ready to take the help of Israel.
So much so that the then acting State ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi, who replaced senior IPS officer Hemant Karkare killed in the November 26, 2008 attacks on Mumbai, had gone to town by saying: âHe (Purohit) believed that the Indian Constitution was not enough to tackle what was happening in the country and wanted to establish a Hindu Rashtra. He wanted to take help of Israel to further his cause.â
(Sounds like more planted 'evidence'.)
Shevadeâs comments should be seen in the light of the fact that the MCOCA â enacted to coming down heavily on the organised syndicates â mandates that the legislation could be invoked against a group of accused only if at least one of them has a criminal background and has been chargesheeted twice in a criminal case within a period of 10 years.
The defence lawyers, including Shevde and Ganesh Sovani, had challenged the applicability of MCOCA in the Malegaon blasts case.
The ATS booked all 11 accused under MCOCA on November 20, 2008 on the ground that Dhawade had two chargesheets against him. Soon after his arrest in Malegaon blast case on November 2, 2008, the ATS had linked him to two explosions inside mosques in Parbhani and Jalna in 2003 and 2004 respectively. The ATS claimed that Dhawade had provided arms training to suspects involved in those two explosions.
The chargesheets were filed against Dhawade in the two explosions on November 13 and November 15, 2008.
Shevde, however, sought to explain Friday's ruling vis-Ã -vis Dhawadeâs role in other blasts by saying: âThe discharge of Dhawade in Parbhani blast case has no bearing on the applicability of MCOCA in this court. When Dhawade and other accused were arrested in November 2008, there was no chargesheet against any of them. <b>The ATS subsequently wrote to the Parbhani and Jalna police and asked them to book Dhawade in that case.</b> We argued that this action was mala fide and the court accepted our argument.â
The special court may have ruled on Friday that the ATS committed a mistake in applying MCOCA in the Malegaon blasts case, but there are still three cases â not exactly similar ones â where applicability of MCOCA has been challenged. They are: the Aurangabad arms haul case on May 2006, the Sept 8, 2006 Malegaon serial blasts case, and the July 11, 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts case. The Supreme Court has stayed the trials in these cases till its verdict on a bunch of petitions challenging the applicability of MCOCA to the accused in these three cases.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Partly relieved. But in the case of Dara Singh and the others who were accused along with him over Staines, an innocent Hindu was in the end convicted anyway in the sham trial, and the CBI even tried to get him a death sentence for the greater glory of christianism.
Can't help contemplating what will happen here.
http://dailypioneer.com/192996/MCOCA-charg...-to-Pragya.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->FRONT PAGE | Saturday, August 1, 2009 | Email | Print |
<b>MCOCA charges donât stick to Pragya</b>
TN Raghunatha | Mumbai
<b>Lt Col Purohit, nine others also free of stringent Act</b>
In a major jolt to the Maharashtraâs Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), a special trial court on Friday dropped the charges under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) invoked against all 11 accused in the September 28, 2008 Malegaon blasts case, including Army officer Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Dayanand Pandey alias Sudhakar Dhariwedi.
(Sudhakar is his real birth name, Sudhakar Dhar. But the name of "Dayanand Pandey" has nothing to do with Swami Amritananda Dev Tirtha.)
In a ruling that vindicated the stand taken by the defence lawyers that the ATS had wrongly applied MCOCA against the accused, designated Special MCOCA court Judge YB Shinde said none of the accused was part of an organised crime syndicate and no one had more than one chargesheet filed against him or her â which is a pre-requisite for invoking the MCOCA provisions against Sadhvi Pragya, Lt Col Purohit and other accused in the case.
As a consequence of the dropping of the MCOCA charges against the 11 accused, the Malegaon blasts case will now be heard at a regular sessions court at Nashik. Now that they will be tried under various sections of Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Explosive Substances Act, the accused can look forward to getting bail in the case - a thing that was not happening as long as they were saddled with the MCOCA charges.
Apart from Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya and Dayanand Pandey, the other accused against whom the MCOCA charges have been dropped are: Abhinav Bharat activist Sameer Kulkarni, Shivnarayan Kalsangra, Shyam Sahu, former army officer Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Rakesh Dhawde, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Jagdish Mhatre.
The Malegaon blasts, it may be recalled, had claimed six lives and left 101 others injured on the night of September 29, 2008.
Fridayâs development has also embarrassed the Congress-led DF Government which used the Malegaon blasts case to pillory the BJP-led Opposition in the run-up to the recent Lok Sabha poll.
<b>Maharashtra Minister of State for Home Naseem Khan sought to play down the import of the special court ruling, by saying that the State Government would challenge the ruling in the Bombay High Court within next four weeks.</b>
The special court's ruling dropping MCOCA charges against Sadhvi Pragya, Purohit and other accused comes close on the heels of an order by a Parbhani fast track court, discharging Rakesh Dhawade, one of the 11 arrested in the Malegaon blasts case, from the 2003 Purna blast case in Parbhani district for want of adequate evidence.
Dubbing the special courtâs ruling as a âslap on the faceâ of the ATS officials who investigated the Malegaon blasts case, Purohitâs lawyer Shrikant Shevde told The Pioneer: âIt has now been proved beyond doubt that the ATS had misused the provisions of MCOCA to bracket them with terrorists and gangsters belonging to the organised crime syndicates. <b>From what the ATS officials have done in the Malegaon blasts case, it is high time that powers vested with him to invoke the provisions of MCOCA should be taken away from them.â </b>
As if to buttress its case, the ATS â when it filed a 4,528-page chargesheet before the MCOCA court on January 20, 2009 â had among other things <b>claimed</b> that Purohit's main aim was to establish âHindu Rashtraâ for which he was ready to take the help of Israel.
So much so that the then acting State ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi, who replaced senior IPS officer Hemant Karkare killed in the November 26, 2008 attacks on Mumbai, had gone to town by saying: âHe (Purohit) believed that the Indian Constitution was not enough to tackle what was happening in the country and wanted to establish a Hindu Rashtra. He wanted to take help of Israel to further his cause.â
(Sounds like more planted 'evidence'.)
Shevadeâs comments should be seen in the light of the fact that the MCOCA â enacted to coming down heavily on the organised syndicates â mandates that the legislation could be invoked against a group of accused only if at least one of them has a criminal background and has been chargesheeted twice in a criminal case within a period of 10 years.
The defence lawyers, including Shevde and Ganesh Sovani, had challenged the applicability of MCOCA in the Malegaon blasts case.
The ATS booked all 11 accused under MCOCA on November 20, 2008 on the ground that Dhawade had two chargesheets against him. Soon after his arrest in Malegaon blast case on November 2, 2008, the ATS had linked him to two explosions inside mosques in Parbhani and Jalna in 2003 and 2004 respectively. The ATS claimed that Dhawade had provided arms training to suspects involved in those two explosions.
The chargesheets were filed against Dhawade in the two explosions on November 13 and November 15, 2008.
Shevde, however, sought to explain Friday's ruling vis-Ã -vis Dhawadeâs role in other blasts by saying: âThe discharge of Dhawade in Parbhani blast case has no bearing on the applicability of MCOCA in this court. When Dhawade and other accused were arrested in November 2008, there was no chargesheet against any of them. <b>The ATS subsequently wrote to the Parbhani and Jalna police and asked them to book Dhawade in that case.</b> We argued that this action was mala fide and the court accepted our argument.â
The special court may have ruled on Friday that the ATS committed a mistake in applying MCOCA in the Malegaon blasts case, but there are still three cases â not exactly similar ones â where applicability of MCOCA has been challenged. They are: the Aurangabad arms haul case on May 2006, the Sept 8, 2006 Malegaon serial blasts case, and the July 11, 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts case. The Supreme Court has stayed the trials in these cases till its verdict on a bunch of petitions challenging the applicability of MCOCA to the accused in these three cases.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Partly relieved. But in the case of Dara Singh and the others who were accused along with him over Staines, an innocent Hindu was in the end convicted anyway in the sham trial, and the CBI even tried to get him a death sentence for the greater glory of christianism.
Can't help contemplating what will happen here.