NIA court rejects plea seeking untruncated copies

Mumbai: The special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Wednesday rejected the application filed by two accused, including Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit, in 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case seeking untruncated copies of the chargesheet. The NIA court observes that the applicants didn’t point out which documents they want and application was filed with hidden agenda of delaying the trial.

Special NIA judge V.S. Padalkar in his order observed that the applicants have not pointed out in their pleas, which documents and witness’s statements they are talking about. “The application is vague. The applications filed by accused no 9 (Col Purohit) and 10 (Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi) with intention to get an opportunity to delay in conducting the trial hence this application can’t be accepted,” said the judge while rejecting the pleas moved by the accused.

“We would be moving fresh application pointing out to court which documents have been provided to us that are truncated to such an extent that it would deprive the defence of its right to prepare for defence,” said advocate Rajeed Sangle appearing on behalf of Dwivedi.

Apart from untrucated copies the accused had also sought copy of Compact disc (CD) containing the video and photographs of the spot where blast had taken place. Special public prosecutor Avinash Rasal informed the court that the NIA will provide the copy of CD to all the accused. Following this the judge directed them to make copies of the relevant CD before the court and provide it to the accused.

Currently Col. Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Major (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi and Sudhakar Chaturvedi are facing trial.