Mumbai: BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur, a defendant in the 2008 Malegaon bomb case, was summoned by a special NIA court to appear before it on Tuesday, February 27, to record statements. If she does not, the court has threatened to take “necessary action.”
On February 22, while approving Thakur’s request for a one-day medical exemption, Special Judge A K Lahoti issued this directive.The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are the legal frameworks which Thakur and six other individuals are being tried under. Currently, statements made by the accused under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) are being recorded by the National Investigation Agency court.
Occasionally, the court will also take into account their requests for exemption based on the arguments they present. It has been noted that a few of the accused are out-of-state citizens, and throughout the application process, they have indicated that they have trouble obtaining tickets at the last minute. Thus, they were unable to appear in court,” the judge declared.
But in order to get over that problem, all accused parties are provided dates ahead of time, thus the court ruled that exemptions based on the same reason would not be taken into consideration. Thakur’s appeal, based on her medicine, was taken into consideration by the court for the day. But it also told her to appear there starting on February 27 “without fail, else necessary steps will be taken.”
The accused must all be present on the designated occasions until the statement recording is finished, the court further ordered.”Needless to say they (accused) could stay in Mumbai and if there is ill health, they could get medication in Mumbai also,” the jury was told.
In Malegaon, a town in north Maharashtra about 200 kilometers from Mumbai, an explosive device mounted to a motorbike detonated on September 29, 2008, leaving six dead and over a hundred wounded. Before being moved to the NIA in 2011, the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad conducted the first investigation into the matter. Thakur is a Bhopal-based BJP MP.
