A special anti-terror court here today acquitted right-wing activist Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove charges against them.<\/p>\n
A massive blast had ripped through the Mecca Masjid on May 18, 2007, during Friday prayers, killing nine people and wounding 58.<\/p>\n
Aseemanand’s counsel, J P Sharma, told reporters after the verdict by a metropolitan court for NIA cases that “The prosecution failed to prove allegations against the five accused who faced trial in the case and hence the court acquitted them,”<\/p>\n
Those acquitted are: Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma, Swami Aseemanand alias Naba Kumar Sarkar, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar alias Bharat Bhai and Rajendra Chowdhary, Sharma said.<\/p>\n
The case was initially probed by the local police before being transferred to the CBI, and finally in 2011 to the NIA, the country’s premier anti-terror investigation agency.<\/p>\n
Ten people with alleged links to Hindu right wing organisations were accused in the case.However, only five of them who were acquitted today faced trial.<\/p>\n
Two other accused — Sandeep V Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra — are absconding, while Sunil Joshi was murdered.<\/p>\n
Investigation is continuing against two other accused.<\/p>\n
A total of 226 witnesses were examined during the trial and as many as 411 documents exhibited.<\/p>\n
Swami Aseemanand and Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar were out on bail, while three others were lodged in the Central prison here under judicial remand.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A special anti-terror court here today acquitted right-wing activist Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove charges against them. A massive blast had ripped through the Mecca Masjid on May 18, 2007, during Friday prayers, killing nine people and wounding 58. Aseemanand’s counsel, J P Sharma, told reporters after the verdict by a metropolitan court for NIA cases that “The prosecution failed to prove allegations against the five accused who faced trial in the case and hence the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9315,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313\/revisions\/9315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}