Was on Army duty to join conspirators: Malegaon blast accused Lt. Col Purohit tells HC
Mumbai: Malegaon bomb blast case accused Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit on Wednesday told the Bombay High Court, through his lawyer, that he was collecting intelligence for the Indian Army as part of his duty by attending conspiracy meetings for the 2008 blast.
The high court was hearing Purohit's application seeking that all charges against him in the case be dropped.
Six people were killed and 100 others injured when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon city in the Nashik district of Maharashtra on September 29, 2008.
Neela Gokhale, the counsel for Purohit, who has been booked under anti-terror laws by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), told a bench of Justices SS Shinde and MS Karnik that he had been meeting conspirators and attending secret meetings in a bid to gather information and pass it on to the Army.
Gokhale submitted that Purohit was merely discharging his duties, and therefore, the NIA should have obtained a prior sanction of the Central government to prosecute him.
She said section 197(2) of the CrPC (Criminal Procedure Code) barred a court from the cognizance of any offense that had been committed by any member of the Armed Forces while acting in the discharge of his or her duties without the previous sanction of the Central government.
Gokhale cited "documents from the Indian Army, and former Mumbai joint commissioner of Mumbai Police, Himanshu Roy, commending Purohit for the inputs and information he had allegedly shared with them over the years".
"I (Prasad Shrikant Purohit) am pointing out from these documents that I was discharging my duty, infiltrating in the groups and reporting to my superiors for protecting national security," Gokhale said.
"And for this work, they put me in jail, tortured me, and branded me a terrorist," the counsel said.
In September last year, Purohit had filed a plea in the HC seeking that all charges in the case against him be quashed.
He submitted that the NIA, the prosecuting agency in the case, did not seek prior sanction under the Criminal Procedure Code to prosecute him, therefore, the courts couldn't have taken cognizance of the charges against him.
The NIA, however, opposed Purohit's plea.
In an affidavit filed in the high court in September last year, the NIA had said that in attending the conspiracy meetings, Purohit was not working for the Army and therefore, no sanction under 197 of the CrPc was required for his prosecution.
Purohit was arrested in the case in 2009.
According to the NIA, the motorcycle used in the blast belonged to Purohit's co-accused and BJP MP Pragya Thakur.
The HC will continue hearing the arguments in the case on February 2.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
