May 13, 2023 will mark the 15th anniversary of the 2008 Jaipur blasts – perhaps the first of a series of terror attacks on civilian locations in Indian cities in that year, including the blasts in Delhi (September) and later, in Mumbai (26/11).  Nine bombs at seven locations in the main Pink City part of Jaipur exploded within fifteen minutes of each other, causing an official toll of 71 deaths and over 200 grievously injured.

One would have thought that the perpetrators of the horrific crime would have been brought to book by this time, delivering closure, if not justice, to the victims’ and the survivors’ families. Alas, no. The Rajasthan high court in March this year acquitted all those accused of the crime for lack of evidence. The court also pulled up the state for unacceptably poor investigation and directed an inquiry to fix responsibility on the errant officers. The high court verdict has caused some disquiet and the state has filed an appeal, as is its wont. But a reading of the judgment would make it clear that the state had little more than the empty hope that the court would lack the courage to acquit everyone in a ‘high profile’ case such as this one.

One of the nine blasts occurred in Phoolwalon ka Khanda at the Choti Chaupar area of Jaipur. This is the story that the state wanted but failed to get the high court to believe about that blast:

Saifur Rehman and nine others, described as belonging to the Indian Mujahideen, supposedly entered into a criminal conspiracy to commit bomb-blasts in Jaipur. At the advice of one of them, they left their mobile phones in Delhi and went on May 11, 2008 to Jaipur via a Volvo bus to do a recce of the area where blasts were to be carried out; and also settled on a plan to have them distributed across locations and have them planted on bicycles which they would buy on the same day i.e. 13th. They returned in a non-AC bus on the same day. They were busy making the bombs to be used on May 12 at Batla house, Delhi. They again came to Jaipur on May 13, by two different buses, and returned to Delhi on the same day after purchasing the cycles, planting the bombs and setting the timer on the bombs. They returned by the Ajmer Shatabdi express train that evening, booking tickets under assumed/fake Hindu names. As far as this one blast site was concerned, the cycle on which the bomb had been planted was bought by Saifur Rahman from a cycle shop called Hemraj Cycles, whose owner was able to identify Saifur Rahman. The Jaipur police were able to unravel all this based on a confessional statement by one of the conspirators who was caught by the Delhi police after the Batla house encounter four months later, following the September blasts in New Delhi.

To prove this story, each of the following would have to be established:

• the exact identity of the persons as mentioned by the lone confessor;
• that there was a link between them so as to establish a reasonable suspicion of conspiracy and with each having done at least one act in relation to the conspiracy;
• their travel on May 11 and 13, 2008;
• the bomb-making on May 12;
• that Saifur actually bought the cycle from Hemraj Cycles on May 13;
• the cycle he is shown to have bought being the same cycle in which the bomb was planted;
• and their travel back to Delhi on the 13th.

The high court sifted through all the ‘evidence’ the prosecution put forward and found that it was not only a case of insufficient evidence; but a case of no-evidence-whatsoever.

Sample this. One of the critical elements is the bicycle. How did the police know that the cycle bought by Saifur was the same as the one sold by Hemraj Cycles on May 13, 2008? Perhaps they seized the bill book, and found the frame number of the cycle sold to Saifur to be the same as the frame number on the cycle found to have had the bomb? Wrong! Laughably, the state attempted to argue that because the frame number is not mentioned in the bill that was supposedly drawn up for that purchase and the frame-number is also not found in the Hercules cycle found at the blast site, they must be the same. And, they didn’t seize the bill book (it was brought to court much later by the shop owner). And the bill they were referring to in the bill book didn’t have the date of May 13, but had the date of May 12! And there were markings/over-writing in blue ink on the carbon copy of the bill book in the bills just before and after the bill that the state was relying on – pointing to a strong suspicion of tampering.

There were apparently nearly 50 cycle shops in the area and the police was unable to explain how their investigators zeroed-in on Hemraj Cycles as the store from where Saifur supposedly bought a cycle. The one officer who did the entire investigation relating to the cycle stores, and who could have perhaps thrown some light on the question, was not examined as a witness by the prosecution. And how did the Hemraj Cycle owner identify the alleged purchaser? In a Test Identification Parade conducted a full year later; and in court eight years later. The shop owner was able to pin-pointedly identify Saifur – a person whom he describes as not having any remarkable features or markers; and someone whom he has never seen more than once, i.e. at the time of that alleged bicycle sale.

And then this. How exactly did the police figure out that there was an Indian Mujahideen (IM) link to the case? Because someone claiming to be IM allegedly wrote an email to some media houses and to a senior police officer on May 14 claiming responsibility for the attacks. And how did they go about proving this? They produced a print out claiming this was the email. And then nothing else. Not only did they not adhere to the legal mandate under Section 65B of the Evidence Act (which let us say may be excused as a technicality), they didn’t even produce or examine as witness those whom the police claimed had received the email.

The judgment’s passages that enlist the procession of circumstances that the prosecution set out to prove and failed to do – from the travel, to the claim of the conspirators being in touch with each other; and the assumption of Hindu names; to the actual bomb-making – reads like a very long, unfunny joke.

This judgment is also remarkable for the rare courage demonstrated by the court, to remain uninfluenced by the emotional turmoil surrounding the case and the public's thirst for retribution. Although this is expected of a constitutional court, it still is rare.

The anguish and despair endured by everyone involved in the case – from the accused who have been hauled up with no evidence and the victims’ families who continue to not know who killed their kin and how and why, to the lawyers and judges – must now be channeled towards something constructive. It is perhaps time to rethink the undue deference that the initial stages of the criminal process show to the state, which in this case was exploited by it. It is painfully clear now that the need to instantly gratify public expectations seems to have led the state to change its goal from delivering justice to delivering a picture that it thought may pass off as justice.

Prasanna S is a Delhi-based lawyer.

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