Malegaon blast: NIA moves court, wants in-camera trial

Mumbai: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday moved an application before the trial court seeking in-camera trial of the 2008 Malegaon blast case.

After receiving the application, special NIA judge Vinod Padalkar posted it for hearing on Friday when all the concerned parties are expected to argue on this plea.

General public and journalists are not allowed to attend the in-camera proceedings. The court had held in-camera court proceedings at the initial stage of the case, but after framing of charges the trial was made public.

Since then the prosecution has examined 124 prosecution witnesses in the case. The NIA has given list of total 475 witnesses to the trial court.

The NIA's plea has came at a time when one of the accused Col Prasad Purohit's petition seeking untruncated copies of statement of prosecution witnesses is pending before the Bombay high court.

The NIA has provided truncated copies, in which names and addresses of witnesses were removed, to the accused in order to protect the witnesses.

However, Col Purohit has sought untracated copies saying it was not possible to cross-examine witnesses without knowing their identities.

Currently seven accused, including, Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and five other persons are facing trial in this case.

Six people were killed and 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in north Maharashtra town of Malegaon, about 200 km from here, on September 29, 2008.