SIMI-Lashkar or IM, who carried out the 7/11 terror attacks? 20 years later, probe at square one

One of the accused passed away while in prison during the pandemic, before the acquittal order.

The blasts killed 187 people and injured 817. (Archive)

The ATS headed by K P Raghuvanshi had concluded that the attack was orchestrated by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba with the help of the accused who were part of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

Three months after the train blasts, then Mumbai Police Commissioner A N Roy had praised the ATS probe, calling it “a beautiful piece of highly professional investigation”, and said the explosives were put in pressure cookers and placed across the first class of seven local trains by Lashkar operatives.

But, in 2008, the ATS probe came into question when the Crime Branch of the Mumbai Police arrested Sadiq Shaikh, an alleged member of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), for the 2008 Delhi and Ahmedabad blasts, along with others.

Officers said Shaikh told them that the IM was responsible for all the blasts in the country since 2005, and that he along with four others had planted the bombs on Mumbai local trains in July 2006. The ATS cited lack of proof to question this theory.

Again, in 2013, alleged IM co-founder Yasin Bhatkal – who was arrested from the India-Nepal border in Bihar – said the outfit had carried out the train blasts, as a retaliation to the 2002 riots in Gujarat.

Last year, the Bombay High Court acquitted all 12 men convicted by a special court in the case, holding that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. (File photo)

In its order acquitting the men in July 2025, the High Court Special Bench of Justices Anil S Kilor and Shyam C Chandak questioned the veracity of “identical confessions” made by 11 accused; pointed to allegations of custodial torture before the “confessions”; and noted the lack of any reliable material for the state to grant “prior approval” to invoke the stringent anti-terror laws.

The prosecution “utterly failed to establish the offences beyond a reasonable doubt against the accused on each count”, the court held. “It is unsafe to reach the satisfaction that the appellant accused have committed the offence for which they have been convicted and sentenced.”

In an indictment of the probe, the Bench said: “Creating a false appearance of having solved a case by presenting that the accused have been brought to justice gives a misleading sense of resolution. This deceptive closure undermines public trust.”

When contacted, Raghuvanshi, who headed the ATS at the time, refused to comment, saying “the matter is sub-judice”.

An officer linked to the probe said while the High Court had acquitted the accused, the Special MCOCA Court had found them guilty. “It is up to the Supreme Court to take a decision,” the officer said.