Supreme Court stays Bombay HC's acquittal of 2006 Mumbai train blast accused

Supreme Court stays Bombay HC's acquittal of 2006 Mumbai train blast

The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed the Bombay High Court's decision to acquit the 12 accused in the 2006 Mumbai train blast case.

The court, however, clarified that the stay order will not affect the accused persons' release from jail. The bench added that the high court judgement shall not be treated as a precedent.

Earlier, the Maharashtra government had filed an appeal in the top court challenging the Bombay High Court's decision to acquit twelve people accused in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts.

On Tuesday, the apex court agreed to hear the plea challenging the High Court verdict.

A bench of Chief Justice BR Gavai and Justices K Vinod Chandran and NV Anjaria had listed the matter after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Maharashtra government, mentioned for urgent listing saying that there is an element of urgency.

Acquitting all the 12 accused in the case, the high court had said the prosecution utterly failed to prove the case and it was "hard to believe the accused committed the crime".

More than 180 people were killed and 800 injured in the seven train blasts that rocked Mumbai on the evening of July 11, 2006.

Of the 12 accused, five had been sentenced to death and seven to life imprisonment by the special court. One of the death row convicts died in 2021.

The high court verdict came as a major embarrassment to the Maharashtra ATS which probed the case.

The agency said that the accused were members of the banned outfit Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and hatched the conspiracy with Pakistani members of the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).