Mumbai: An Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) officer who the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had claimed had planted RDX at the residence of Sudhakar Chaturvedi, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast trial, on Thursday denied the allegations before a special court. The ATS officer, Shekhar Bagade, who appeared before the court as a witness, said the allegations had been made to defame him.
The ATS has probed the blast case before it was taken over by the NIA, which had given a clean chit to Pragya Thakur and five others in its supplementary chargesheet of 2016, stating that there was not enough evidence to prosecute them. However, it said that Prasad Shrikant Purohit, then a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army, and others were behind the conspiracy.
Pragya Thakur Continues To Face Trial
However, Thakur continues to be on trial as the special court had refused to accept her plea for discharge. The central agency had alleged, on the basis of statements made by a subedar and his superior before a Court of Inquiry, that Bagade had broken into Chaturvedi's residence and left traces of RDX in 2008, which were later found in a raid by the ATS.
ATS Officer Denies Charges
On Thursday, Bagade refuted before the special court that he was found by two army officials at Chaturvedi’s home planting RDX as evidence in the 2008 blast case. Bagade termed these as allegations and said he has been defamed. Bagade said the NIA has no evidence apart from these statements to make these allegations and claimed that it is a conspiracy against him. He said he had learnt about the allegations for the first time in 2015 and called them an “afterthought”.
Bagade said he is an honest officer and pointed out that his father was in the army. He also denied that he had first asked the subedar to help him with the keys to Chaturvedi’s home and later told him he did not need it. He denied that the subedar and his superior had seen him with a gunny bag rubbing something to the floor of Chaturvedi’s residence.
