Malegaon blast: After 10yrs, Purohit, 6 others charged under UAPA
A special court in Mumbai framed charges against Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, and five others in the September 2008 Malegaon bomb-blast case. They were charged today under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and Sections of the IPC. Apart from Purohit and Sadhvi, other accused are Major (Retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, and Sameer Kulkarni.
Under UAPA, accused charged with being part of terrorist act
Vinod Padalkar, the judge presiding over the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court, framed charges against the accused persons. Under the UAPA, accused have been charged with being part of a terrorist act, and under IPC they have been charged with criminal conspiracy and murder. All the accused were present in the court when the judge read out the charges against them.
A roundup of the Malegaon bomb blast
On September 29, 2008, around 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 the Nashik district of North Maharashtra.