Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday granted bail to retired major Ramesh Upadhyay, who is an accused in the September 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts’ case. A week ago, the trial court granted bail to two other accused — Shankaracharya Amritanand alias Sudhakar Dwivedi and Sudhakar Chaturvedi.

A division bench of justice Ranjit More and justice Sadhna Jadhav granted bail to Upadhyay while hearing his appeal against rejection of his bail plea by the special National Investigating Agency (NIA) court. Upadhyay’s lawyer, Rahul Arote, contended before the court that the NIA had already dropped MCOCA charges against Upadhyay and that the Supreme Court last month granted bail to another co-accused, Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit. Arote argued that as per observations made by the apex court, Upadhyay was entitled bail on grounds of parity. Although NIA counsel, Sandesh Patil, opposed the bail application, the bench granted Upadhyay bail on a personal bond of `1 lakh, saying that the accused was entitled to bail on grounds of parity.

The prosecution case against Upadhyay is that he attended conspiracy meetings in Faridabad and Bhopal, and was part of the criminal conspiracy towards the 2008 Malegaon blasts. The prosecution also relied on intercepted conversations between Lt Col Purohit and major Upadhyay where they spoke in code language after the arrest of a few accused in the blasts’ case. According to Upadhyay however, there was no discussion about the blasts in the meetings mentioned by the prosecution. 

Seven people were killed in bomb blasts on September 29, 2008, in Malegaon, a communally-sensitive textile town in Nashik district of northern Maharashtra. Twelve persons including sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Purohit were arrested for carrying out the blasts which killed six persons and injured a 100 others. Following a SC order, a special court was constituted to exclusively hear the case.