Supreme Court grants bail to Lt Col Shrikant Purohit in Malegaon case

New Delhi, August 21

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

A bench of Justices RK Agrawal and AM Sapre said they were setting aside the Bombay High Court order by which the bail was denied.

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

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

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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 chargesheet 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. However, Thakur was last year given clean chit by the NIA. PTI