Asaduddin Owaisi
Hyderabad: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) President Asaduddin Owaisi on Friday, April 24 termed the Bombay High Court verdict in the 2006 Malegaon as betrayal of victims.
The Hyderabad MP reacted to the High Court’s discharge of the four accused, Rajendra Chaudhary, Dhan Singh, Manohar Ram Singh Narwaria, and Lokesh Sharma, due to lack of evidence.
“The accused all allegedly belonged to Abhinav Bharat. The explosions claimed 31 lives and injured 312. The blasts specifically targeted Muslims,” Owaisi said.
In a post on X, he said, “The blasts specifically targeted Muslims. Yet, maybe out of habit, the investigation agencies first arrested nine Muslims, who were eventually acquitted in 2016”
He compared the verdict to the 2008 Malegaon blast case and said, “This case has followed a similar trajectory to the 2008 blasts case. Rohini Salian, NIA’s prosecutor, was on record saying that NIA asked her to go soft on the accused.”
The 2006 Malegaon blasts case “seems to have reached a dead end,” the Bombay High Court has said while discharging four accused and pulling up the NIA for “completely ignoring” the evidence collected by the previous probing agency.
The high court’s order on Wednesday, April 22, left unanswered the question of who was responsible for the explosions that claimed 31 lives.
The HC discharged the four accused – Rajendra Chaudhary, Dhan Singh, Manohar Ram Singh Narwaria, and Lokesh Sharma – noting there was insufficient evidence to make them face trial in the case.
They were charged under the Indian Penal Code sections for murder and criminal conspiracy, and the Unlawful (Activities) Prevention Act (UAPA), a stringent anti-terror law.
The HC, while quashing the special court order of September 2025 framing charges against the four accused, stated the judge had then not “applied his mind”.
On September 8, 2006, four bombs exploded at Malegaon town in Maharashtra’s Nashik district, three inside the premises of Hamidia Masjid and Bada Kabrastan just after Friday prayers, and the fourth in Mushawarat Chowk, killing 31 persons and injuring 312 others.
A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Shyam Chandak, in its judgment, said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) “completely ignored” the probe and chargesheet of the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which gives a vivid narration of the entire planning by the nine Muslim men arrested earlier in the case.
The probe witnessed several twists and turns with the initial investigating agencies claiming the conspiracy was hatched by the Muslim accused, but the NIA, which later probed the case, alleged right-wing extremists were behind the powerful explosions.
“The case seems to have reached a dead end. The diagonally opposite stories in the chargesheet filed by the ATS and the NIA lead nowhere,” said the HC order, made available on Thursday.
With inputs from PTI
This post was last modified on April 25, 2026 12:15 pm