Malegaon blast case: Special court likely to start recording statements of accused from Oct 3

Six accused — BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, retired (Major) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sameer Kulkarni, Sudhakar Chaturvedi — were present before the court Monday.

The court issued a bailable warrant of Rs 5,000 against Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi, who remained absent.

His lawyer submitted to the court that Dwivedi was performing a religious ritual and would be able to appear before the court only from November 3.

A blast at Malegaon near Nashik on September 29, 2008, killed six and injured over 100. (File)

Special Judge A K Lahoti said that since the court had fixed the case for recording of the statements of the accused on Monday, it was necessary that they remained present.

In a criminal trial, after all the witnesses presented by the prosecution are examined, the court proceeds towards recording the statement of the accused under Section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

This is to give an opportunity to the accused to explain any circumstances appearing in the evidence against them.

The court puts questions to the accused based on the evidence put forth by each of the witnesses and the accused is expected to respond to that. The court usually prepares a questionnaire and the accused can respond orally or in writing.

In this case, the lawyers of some of the accused approached court on Monday, seeking that they be given a copy of the questionnaire prepared by the court so that they can assist the accused to enable them to offer a proper explanation. The lawyers submitted that the accused hail from different cities, age groups and speak various languages. The questions may be over 3,000 in number considering the voluminous evidence, with the case pending for 15 years, and may take 3-4 months to be answered, the court was told by the lawyers.

Their plea said that the accused may not be able to comprehend the questions or offer an explanation with proper context and hence the lawyers should be permitted to help the court in preparing the questions and also help the accused in responding to them so that the process can be completed within a few weeks.

The court has directed special public prosecutors Avinash Rasal and Anushree Rasal to respond to the pleas by Friday.

The court also directed all the accused to remain present before it from 11am on Tuesday. Thakur, who had previously sought an adjournment for recording of her statement due to the special session of the Parliament held last week, requested the court to allow her to exempt her from appearing at 11am stating that she has health issues including high blood pressure due to which she cannot wake up early and appear before court.

On Monday, Thakur appeared before court around 2pm. During the recording of evidence of witnesses, Thakur and four other accused had sought an exemption from appearance and had been present before court on a few occasions when summoned as per court’s directions.

On Monday, lawyer Amit Ghag for Purohit also sought permission to recall a witness, seeking that he has to be confronted with certain documents accessed through the Right to Information Act.

A previous plea to recall the witness filed by Purohit was rejected by the court this month. The plea is also likely to be decided later this month.