Ahmedabad, Jan 31 (PTI) A special court here is likely to pronounce its judgement on Tuesday in the case related to the 2008 Ahmedabad serial bomb blasts that claimed 56 lives and which saw nearly 80 accused put on trial.
Special public prosecutor Amit Patel said special judge A R Patel had fixed Tuesday (February 1) as the date for judgement for the first time, nearly four months after the trial in the more than 13-year-old case concluded in September last year.
At least 56 people were killed and over 200 injured in 21 bomb blasts that rocked Ahmedabad city within a span of 70 minutes on July 26, 2008.
The police had claimed people associated with banned terror outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM), a faction of radicals of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), were involved in the blasts.
It was alleged that Indian Mujahideen terrorists had planned and executed these blasts as a revenge for the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat, in which several persons from the minority community had died.
Days after the serial blasts in Ahmedabad, the police had recovered bombs from different parts of Surat. Following the recovery, 20 FIRs were registered in Ahmedabad and 15 in Surat.
The trial was conducted after the court merged all 35 FIRs into one. The trial commenced against 78 accused and the number came down to 77 after one of them turned an approver.
Eight to nine accused in the case are still on the run, it was stated.
The trial was conducted against 77 accused, for which the prosecution examined over 1,100 witnesses. The lengthy legal proceeding began in December 2009, over a year after the terror strikes in the state’s commercial hub.
The accused are facing charges of murder, criminal conspiracy, and have also been booked under relevant provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), an anti-terror law.
The special court initially heard the case from inside the Sabarmati Central Jail for security reasons and the proceedings were later conducted mostly through video-conferencing.
When the trial was underway, some of the accused had allegedly tried to escape by digging a 213 feet long tunnel in the jail in 2013. Trial for this jailbreak attempt is still pending. PTI KA PD RSY RSY
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Source: The Print
