2008 Jaipur blast: Rajasthan govt sacks additional AG amid Opposition fire over acquittal of accused

Unconvinced by the prosecution’s case, a division bench of Justices Pankaj Bhandari and Sameer Jain on Wednesday acquitted the four accused and flagged a “botched investigation” caused by “institutional failure”. The four were sentenced to death in 2019 over the blasts which killed 71 people and injured 185 others. The court also directed the state government to take action against erring officials.

The case was argued in court by additional government advocate Rekha Madnani, whose work was also appreciated by the court in its judgment. However, sources said that what irked the government after the verdict was AAG Yadav’s lack of monitoring of the case.

A senior law officer told The Indian Express, “A case is first assigned to an AAG. Thereafter, the AAG decides to assign the case to a government advocate and has to monitor the developments all the time. The government felt that when the blast case was first assigned to AAG Yadav, he should have understood the gravity of the issue and done regular monitoring. But he did not go to the court during the hearings.”

When contacted by The Indian Express, sacked AAG Yadav said, “Since February 2022, the blast case was no longer with me because of fresh redistribution and allocation of work.” Yadav declined to comment further.

The Gehlot-led Congress government has drawn severe flak over the matter from the Opposition BJP, which has accused it of “weakly arguing” the prosecution’s case in the court which led to the acquittals. Former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot has also demanded an inquiry on the issue.