Mumbai: A day after the 18th anniversary of the 7/11 serial train blasts in the city, a special bench of the Bombay High Court was formed comprising Justices AS Kilor and Shyam Chandak to hear the appeals filed by convicts and the death confirmation plea filed by the state government in the case.
A notice was issued by the high court Registrar on Friday stating that a special of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak will take up the case from July 15 onwards. The notice comes shortly after Ehtesham Siddique, one of the convicts who was sentenced to death penalty, filed an application through his lawyer Yug Chaudhary seeking early hearing of the matter.
Last week, Chaudhary had told a bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande that the accused have been behind bars for the last 18 years and their appeals have not been taken up for hearing yet. He had also pointed out that this is one of the oldest confirmation case pending before the HC. The bench had then remarked that 18 years was indeed too “long a time” and had said steps would be taken to ensure that the appeals are heard.
Since the appeals and confirmation plea was filed, the matter has been listed before at least ten different benches. However, the same could not be taken up for hearing due to various reasons, primary being voluminous documents and evidence — 192 prosecution witnesses, 51 defence witnesses, 190 huge volumes of papers.
Special public prosecutor Raja Thakare and Chaudhary had informed that the hearing into the appeals would take at least six months. On July 11, 2006, RDX blasts at seven locations on the suburban rail network of Mumbai in a span of 11 minutes had claimed 189 lives and injured 800.
In September 2015, the special MCOCA court had awarded death sentences to five convicts and life imprisonment to seven others. The state government then filed an appeal in HC seeking confirmation of the death penalty. A death sentence awarded by the trial court has to be confirmed by the HC. The convicts too filed an appeal against their conviction and the state also filed a plea as
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