On 16th April 2018, the NIA Court acquitted all five who were accused in the Mecca Masjid blasts, citing lack of evidence.
Vinod K. Jose, Executive Editor of the Caravan which had carried a voluntary confession of one of the key accused, Swami Aseemanand, is deeply upset by the NIA’s claim of “Not enough evidence”. Here is his facebook post about the acquittal :
“No evidence, no evidence & no evidence. Agencies and courts hearing terror cases across India, that had RSS men involved are making a mockery of justice. In 2014 The Caravan magazine had managed nine hrs confessions from Aseemanand from Ambala jail out of his free will, NIA had said it was coming to pick up the tapes. But it never did. The CBI passed on many volumes of evidences to the NIA when it took over all Hindu terror cases. Hemant Karkare’s Maharashtra ATS also passed on its painstakingly gathered evidences. The bureaucrats who worked dubiously in this period, later contested on BJP ticket to parliament, all became MPs, and some became ministers. NIA failed cases one after the other, and the celebrated new agency’s record suddenly became worse than the CBI. (NIA today is not National Investigation Agency, but No Investigation Agency.)
If the justice system in India failed or not, anyone who wanted to know what was going on India from 2005 and 2014 in the cases of Hindu terror groups, I suggest to read brilliant Leena Reghunath’s profile of Aseemanand. It is a must read at least once in your lifetime.
The piece was based on Aseemanand’s confessions from inside Ambala Central prison, the man who prided to be staying in the same cell as Gandhi killer Godse.
If you don’t have enough time today to read the whole article, just read two graphs from the screenshot attached. It will tell you why the plot was huge and the case was a big litmus test on Indian democracy to know if it had the guts to pursue justice. The Congress failed. And the BJP govt made sure no damage was done to the men and ideology. At the end everyone is happy. Except the families of 117 people killed in those 3-4 blasts.
Also, going by today’s headlines in the national papers, the NIA judge resigned from service soon after giving the judgment yesterday morning. Why?
Will we ever know the reason? Soon after his resignation, when people started asking why the judge resigned, a disinformation campaign started by a certain section of lawyers that a corruption case against the judge was with the High Court, but the High Court has rebutted it. We heard in Judge Loya story: Rs 100 cr offer for a favourable judgment, and when refused, finally death in mysterious circumstances. Indian judiciary is in coma. And if a democracy can’t investigate without fear and conduct a trial freely what has that society come to?”
Below is the original post.
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Mumbai (PTI): The rupee depreciated 31 paise to settle at 91.99 against the US dollar on Wednesday, touching the lowest closing level for the second time in less than a week, amid increased month-end demand for the greenback.
Forex traders said the rupee opened higher as the US dollar index softened and a long-awaited trade breakthrough with Europe offered quiet reassurance. However, increased month-end demand for the American currency as well as the ongoing geopolitical tensions dented investors' sentiments.
At the interbank foreign exchange, the rupee opened at 91.60 and touched an early high of 91.50, but pared all the gains to touch an intra-day low of 91.99 against the greenback.
The domestic unit settled 31 paise down, revisiting its lowest-ever closing level of 91.99 against the greenback. The Indian currency previously ended at this level on January 23 when it also hit its all-time intraday low of 92 against the US dollar.
On Tuesday, the rupee rebounded from its all-time low levels and gained 22 paise to close at 91.68 against the US dollar.
Analysts said the rupee opened higher as the US dollar index softened and a long-awaited trade breakthrough with Europe bolstered investor sentiment.
India and the European Union on Tuesday announced the conclusion of negotiations for the free trade agreement (FTA), under which a number of domestic sectors such as apparel, chemicals and footwear will get duty-free entry into the 27-nation bloc, while the EU will get access to the Indian market at concessional duty for cars and wines, an official said.
The deal has been dubbed the "mother of all deals" as it will create a market of about 2 billion people.
Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback's strength against a basket of six currencies, was trading 0.07 per cent lower at 96.14.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading 0.43 per cent lower at USD 67.28 per barrel in futures trade.
On the domestic equity market front, Sensex jumped 487.20 points to settle at 82,344.68, while Nifty surged 167.35 points to 25,342.75.
Foreign Institutional Investors turned net buyers and purchased equities worth Rs 480.26 crore on Wednesday, according to exchange data.
