Bharatiya Janata Party’s Member of Parliament Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit withdrew their appeals against the rejection of discharge, as accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case.
They had filed their appeals before the Bombay High Court after the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court rejected their applications. On Thursday, a single bench of Justice A.S. Gadkari allowed them to withdraw the appeal.
The withdrawal came after NIA made a statement before the high court that they were going to start examining witnesses related to sanction, in the ongoing trial.
Along with Ms. Singh, co-accused Sameer Kulkarni had also filed an appeal against the discharge in the year 2017. Mr. Purohit had filed an appeal on the grounds that the sanction should have been sought before prosecuting him under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (prosecution of judges and public servants).
So far 289 witnesses have been examined in the trial and 25 of them have been declared hostile. On September 29, 2008, a bomb exploded in Malegaon, a city in the Nashik district in Maharashtra killing six and injuring over 100. The other accused are retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi and Sudhakar Chaturvedi.
