Lt Col Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Among 7 Charged In 2008 Malegaon Blast Case

Mumbai: A special court in Mumbai on Tuesday framed charges against Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and five others under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and several sections in the September 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case.

Judge Vinod Padalkar, presiding over the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court, framed charges against the accused persons.

Under the UAPA, the accused have been charged with being part of a terrorist act, and under IPC they have been charged with criminal conspiracy and murder. Framing of charges is a process after which the trial in a criminal case starts.

apart from Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, the other accused are Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sameer Kulkarni.

All the accused were present in the court when the judge read out the charges against them.

Six people were killed and over 100 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, on September 29, 2008.