The Congress government in Rajasthan will appeal against the High Court verdict acquitting all the accused in the 2008 Jaipur serial blasts case.
After a high-level meeting late on Friday night Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said a special leave petition would be filed in the Supreme Court to get the “harshest punishment” to the accused. “The State government will ensure justice to the victims by engaging the best lawyers,” he added.
In a related move, Additional Advocate General Rajendra Yadav, who appeared in the case has been terminated. The Congress in Rajasthan has been caught in a difficult situation with the judgment coming ahead of Assembly election due later this year, as the Opposition BJP has started blaming the acquittals on its “appeasement politics”.
A BJP government headed by Vasundhara Raje was in power when a series of blasts rocked Jaipur on May 13, 2008, killing 71 persons and injuring 200. The chargesheets were filed during Mr. Gehlot’s previous tenure as the CM between December 2008 and December 2013.
Reacting to the decision to appeal, president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL)-Rajasthan Kavita Srivastava said, “To say that the five acquitted are the culprits and have been set free by the HC misses the key issues of fabricated case, botched investigation, shoddy probe and institutional failure.”
Ms. Srivastava said the State government should have facilitated the release of the innocent persons from jail and taken steps for their rehabilitation, as they had spent 15 years of their prime behind bars. The role of security agencies needed to be probed, in the context of the Indian Mujahideen blamed for the blasts, to find the real perpetrators, she said.
Jamaat-e-Islami Hind vice-president M. Salim Engineer expressed outrage over the labelling of the acquitted persons as terrorists and demanded an apology from the State government. He said the innocent persons, incarcerated for 15 years, should be adequately compensated and the police officers who had framed them be punished, as directed by the High Court.
Syed Saadat Ali, one of the lawyers who represented the accused in the High Court, said though it was the prosecution’s right to appeal, the defence lawyers were certain that there was a complete lack of evidence to connect the five with any conspiracy or direct involvement in the blasts.
The BJP staged a demonstration at Badi Chaupad in the Walled City here on Saturday, alleging that the High Court had set aside the death sentence awarded in 2019 because of the Congress government’s failure to put up a strong case. Newly appointed BJP president of the State unit C.P. Joshi said the “appeasement of minorities” by the Congress was responsible for the culprits being let off and justice denied to the families of the victims.
