New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party MP Pragya Singh Thakur, who is one of the seven accused in the Malegaon blast case of 2008, was on Tuesday granted exemption from regular appearance by a special National Investigation Agency court in Mumbai.
Thakur’s lawyer J.P. Mishra had filed a written application citing the MP’s difficulty in travelling to Mumbai regularly due to health and security concerns. The application cited various other reasons including “threat to her life” and “responsibility towards her constituency in Bhopal”.
“Thakur has multiple illnesses and is undergoing treatment at AIIMS. Even while she was in Mumbai (yesterday), she had undergone some tests at Kokilaben Hospital where doctors told her she was having multiple complications and needed to be treated by a team of doctors,” the lawyer said in the application.
Special public prosecutor Avinash Rasal said judge Sitre considered Thakur’s plea and exempted her from regular appearance, and asked her to remain present in the court as and when required.
Earlier, after failing to remain present in the court multiple times, Thakur appeared before the judge on Monday. After her court appearance she spoke to reporters in support of Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on the Madhya Pradesh law against stone pelters, according to news reports.
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“Madhya Pradesh government is giving a befitting reply to those who are attacking Ram bhakts collecting funds for the construction of Ram temple. These attacks are an attempt by the Left to disturb communal peace. A law should be made to punish such people,” said Thakur.
The court had directed all the accused in the case to remain present before it on December 3. However, most of them, including Thakur, skipped court that day, citing the pandemic situation, news reports said.
On December 14, Thakur addressed a Kshatriya Mahasabha gathering in Madhya Pradesh’s Sehore, in which she said, “…[I]f you call a shudra a shudra, they feel bad. Why is this so? Because of ignorance, they are unable to understand.” However, within a week, on December 19, she had failed to appear in court, following which judge Sitre gave her a “last chance” to do so.
Thakur earlier appeared in the court in June 2019 after it ordered the seven accused to remain present once a week. However, she had sought exemption from appearance on various occasions since then.
The other six accused in the case are Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, Sameer Kulkarni, Ramesh Upadhyay, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Ajay Rahirkar and Sudhakar Dwivedi.
The trial in the case came to a halt in March last year following the lockdown imposed across the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, the special NIA court resumed trial. So far, around 140 witnesses out of the total 400 have been examined.
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On September 29, 2008, six people were killed and over 100 others injured when an explosive device strapped on a motorcycle went-off near a mosque in Malegaon, a town about 200 km from Mumbai in north Maharashtra.
The court framed terror charges against Purohit, Thakur and five other accused in October 2018.
The accused in the case have been charged under sections 16 (committing terrorist act) and 18 (conspiring to commit terrorist act) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
They have also been charged under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 153 (a) (promoting enmity between two religious groups), and relevant provisions of the Explosive Substances Act.
(With inputs from PTI)