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The Bombay High Court Tuesday directed the registry of the trial court to produce video- and audio-recordings of meetings that the accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case reportedly attended before the day of the explosion. The recordings had been submitted to the trial court by the ATS. A division bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Shalini Phansalkar Joshi was hearing blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur’s bail plea.
B A Desai, counsel for the intervenor who is a family member of one of the victims of the blast, told the court that while both the ATS and NIA chargesheets mentions “voluminous materials” in the form of audio- and video-recordings of meetings held in Faridabad, Bhopal, Ujjain and Indore, only the transcripts of recordings of the Faridabad meeting are on record. “Sudhakar Trivedi, a witness, in his statements has admitted that he has recorded the proceedings of all the meetings in his laptop and the ATS has mentioned voluminous records in the form of audio and video filed in its chargesheet that was sent to the forensics laboratory for retrieval.
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However, the investigating agencies have only put on record the transcripts of the Faridabad recordings in which Sadhvi is not even present. Crucial evidence of other meetings, especially Bhopal, are missing in which she was present and plotting the blast,” he said.
The court questioned both the ATS and NIA on the rest of the recordings to which the ATS said it had produced the video-recording of the Bhopal meeting before both the trial court and NIA and that it does not have an audio. The court then directed the trial court registry to produce the materials before the court. “These are crucial materials which will throw more light on the role of the accused. Therefore, this must be produced,” said the court.
Desai requested the court to ask the original public prosecutor, Rohini Salian, who had earlier represented the NIA in this case, to appear before the court as she knows the case better. The matter has been kept for February 7, when the court has asked for provisions to be made to view the recordings.
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