SC grants bail to Lt Col Shrikant Purohit in 2008 Malegaon blast case

The Supreme Court today granted bail to Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit in the 2008 Malegaon serial blast case.

A bench of Justices R K Agrawal and A M Sapre said that they are setting aside the Bombay High Court order by which the bail was denied.

The apex court said it has imposed certain conditions on Purohit while granting bail.

On August 17, Purohit had told the apex court that he has been caught in the "political crossfire" and languishing in jail for nine years.

Purohit had moved the apex court challenging the Bombay High Court's order dismissing his bail plea.

Seven people were killed in a bomb blast on September 29, 2008, at Malegaon, a communally-sensitive textile town in Nasik district of north Maharashtra.

A special MCOCA court had earlier ruled that the ATS had wrongly applied this law against Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Purohit and nine others.

The 4,000-page charge sheet had alleged that Malegaon was selected as the blast target because of a sizeable Muslim population there. It had named Thakur, Purohit and co-accused, Swami Dayanand Pandey as the key conspirators. 

The investigating agencies had earlier allegedly attributed the blast to right-wing group Abhinav Bharat.

However, Thakur was given clean chit last year  by the NIA. Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit on the other hand had been detained while serving in the army and had been accused of being in contact with Major Upadhyay, who was part of a larger conspiracy along with the master mind of Malegaon blast, Sameer Kulkarni.

At the same time, shocking revelations of him being connected to the Samjhauta Express bombing along with Sadhvi surfaced.