Written by: Express News Service
2 min readMumbaiSep 10, 2011 01:00 AM IST
First published on: Sep 10, 2011 at 01:00 AM IST
The sessions court on Friday cleared two men — Ramesh Gadkari and Vikram Bhave — convicted for the 2008 bomb blasts in auditoriums of all terror charges.
“It is nowhere the case of the prosecution that the accused by their acts intended to threaten or likely to threaten the unity,integrity,security or sovereignty of India. The words “strike terror” (mentioned in Section 15 of the Unlawful Activites (Prevention) Act signifies the meaning hit hard to create extreme fear,” Sessions Judge N V Nhavkar observed in the 138-page judgment.
Gadkari and Bhave were convicted under various sections of the Indian Penal Code,Explosive Substances Act,Explosives Act and Destruction to Property Act. They were however,acquitted of the terror charges under the stringent UAPA. A trial court had sentenced the two to 10 years’ RI for planting bombs at two auditoriums in Thane and Vashi in 2008.
The accused were also acquitted in a third blast case pertaining to a bomb that went off in a Panvel theatre screening Jodha Akbar on Feb 20,2008 following a delay on the part of the complainant in approaching the investigating agency. The prosecution had claimed that the movie was targeted by a group that felt that history was being distorted by the film’s director. The complainant in this case had approached the ATS only after five months. “I disbelieve his testimony in respect of the presence of the accused Ramesh Gadkari,Vikram Bhave and Mangesh Nikam at the place of the incident,” the judgment reads.
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