Justice denied? Malegaon blast survivors question legal proceedings
Malegaon blasts victims and their families are grappling with a lack of closure as a second group of accused individuals have been discharged in the 2006 case, leaving them with more questions than answers
The 2006 Malegaon bombings, which killed over 30 people and injured 300, have resurfaced as the Bombay High Court discharged the four Hindu men accused of the attacks on April 22, citing a lack of evidence, a decision that has left victims and their families feeling denied justice and questioning the validity of the blasts themselves. This development follows a convoluted investigation history, initially handled by local police and the ATS who arrested nine Muslim men and claimed Islamic terror, later taken over by the CBI which supported those findings, and finally by the NIA which posited "saffron terror" and arrested the four Hindu individuals based on Swami Aseemanand's retracted confession, discharging the initial Muslim accused in 2016. Victims like Ansari Shafiq Ahmad, who lost his son and nephew, and Anees Ahmad Abdul Hafiz, who survived with severe injuries after 19 surgeries, express deep disappointment and a loss of faith in the judiciary, particularly as the state's response to an appeal in this case remains uncertain, while community leaders and legal representatives are discussing challenging the High Court's discharge order in the Supreme Court.
The 2006 Malegaon bombings, which killed over 30 people and injured 300, have resurfaced as the Bombay High Court discharged the four Hindu men accused of the attacks on April 22, citing a lack of evidence, a decision that has left victims and their families feeling denied justice and questioning the validity of the blasts themselves. This development follows a convoluted investigation history, initially handled by local police and the ATS who arrested nine Muslim men and claimed Islamic terror, later taken over by the CBI which supported those findings, and finally by the NIA which posited "saffron terror" and arrested the four Hindu individuals based on Swami Aseemanand's retracted confession, discharging the initial Muslim accused in 2016. Victims like Ansari Shafiq Ahmad, who lost his son and nephew, and Anees Ahmad Abdul Hafiz, who survived with severe injuries after 19 surgeries, express deep disappointment and a loss of faith in the judiciary, particularly as the state's response to an appeal in this case remains uncertain, while community leaders and legal representatives are discussing challenging the High Court's discharge order in the Supreme Court.
The 2006 Malegaon bombings, which killed over 30 people and injured 300, have resurfaced as the Bombay High Court discharged the four Hindu men accused of the attacks on April 22, citing a lack of evidence, a decision that has left victims and their families feeling denied justice and questioning the validity of the blasts themselves. This development follows a convoluted investigation history, initially handled by local police and the ATS who arrested nine Muslim men and claimed Islamic terror, later taken over by the CBI which supported those findings, and finally by the NIA which posited "saffron terror" and arrested the four Hindu individuals based on Swami Aseemanand's retracted confession, discharging the initial Muslim accused in 2016. Victims like Ansari Shafiq Ahmad, who lost his son and nephew, and Anees Ahmad Abdul Hafiz, who survived with severe injuries after 19 surgeries, express deep disappointment and a loss of faith in the judiciary, particularly as the state's response to an appeal in this case remains uncertain, while community leaders and legal representatives are discussing challenging the High Court's discharge order in the Supreme Court.
Loss, they say, has a tendency to linger. What do you do when you get tangible reminders of something as intangible as loss?
On September 8, 2006, four improvised explosive devices (IEDs) ripped through Malegaon in Maharashtra’s Nashik district, killing more than 30 people and injuring 300. One of those IEDs blew up near a medical store at Mushwarat Chowk. Ansari Shafiq Ahmad, 60, who runs the medical store, cannot forget that day. “It was Shab-e-Barat din, when we pay respects to our forefathers,” said Ahmad. That day cost him his future—he lost his son (Sajid) and nephew (Shahbaj Anjum) in the blast.
Two days later, his son’s passport with his visa arrived—he was all set to go to China to study medicine. “My son had passed his class 12 with good marks and he was scheduled to fly on September 19,” said Ahmad. “My nephew, who was in class 12, too, aspired to become a doctor.” What began as a passport-sized reminder of his loss has now become a lingering ache, not just because of what he had lost but what he has been denied—justice.
Two decades on, there was another arrival of a reminder—this time, a court order. On April 22, the Bombay High Court discharged the four accused in the Malegaon blasts case, citing lack of evidence. For victims, and their families, this brings only more questions, no closure. Ahmad narrates the sequence of the blasts probe, how it was first handled by the local police, then by the Anti-terrorism Squad, the Central Bureau of Investigation and finally the National Investigation Agency. “They [ATS] first arrested local boys and claimed it was Islamic terror,” he recalled. “They were in jail for a few years and subsequently got bail. After the NIA took over, they said that these local boys were not involved and they were discharged in 2016. The NIA accused four Hindus of carrying out the blasts and called it an act of saffron terror. Whether it was Islamic or Hindu terror, we lost our sons; we thought we would get justice. But now the High Court has discharged the four accused. Does this mean nobody carried out the blasts? Or, the blasts did not happen and our people died just like that?”
Ahmad had even refused the compensation given by then Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi during their visit to Malegaon. He reportedly told Gandhi that he wanted justice, not compensation. “The state appealed promptly when the nine Muslim boys were discharged,” he said. “Will the state go in appeal now? I have lost faith in our judiciary.”
Ahmad is not alone in his resentment. Anees Ahmad Abdul Hafiz’s body carries several reminders of the blasts. He ran a kebab stall at Mushwarat Chowk then. “When the blast happened, I was covered in blood. There were nine bodies on top of me. I was the lone survivor,” he recalled.
Hafiz survived but life as he knew it was gone. At 43, he has undergone 19 surgeries for his various injuries. “The total expenditure has been more than 20 lakh,” he said. “The government compensation got over a long time ago. Then leaders like Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party helped me get treatment in Mumbai.”
Dr Ansari Akhlaque Ahmed, 57, a unani medicine practitioner, has been helping victims since the day of the blasts. He said that agencies like the ATS, the CBI and the NIA had clearly failed in doing their duty. “The government should immediately appeal,” he said. On the day of the blasts, Akhlaque had treated a boy, whom he is still trying to trace. “He was so traumatised that he refused to travel on the road that led to Hamidia Masjid (the other site of the blasts),” he recalled. “We don’t know where he is now.”
Ovais Ahmad, 24, was about four when the blasts took place. “I was going for namaaz with my father when there was a huge explosion,” he said. “I had a head injury. It still hurts at times. For almost a year, I was at home and used to be afraid of stepping out.” He was first treated by Akhlaque and then at J.J. Hospital in Mumbai. “The discharge order proves that this is andha kanoon [blind justice],” said his father Akeel, 45. “My son could not complete his studies because of the head injury and the trauma. The government is at fault certainly.”
Naseem Khudsi, 50, lost his nephew, Shahad Amir Mohammed Arif, in the blasts. Khudsi was offering prayers at a different mosque when the blasts happened. “We were busy helping people caught in the blasts, unaware that a child from our family had died,” he recalled. “I think that our government has never been supportive of Muslims. The accused should not have been discharged. The government acted so late that affected people have lost all their energy. Those who were boys at the time of blasts now have children of their own and are trying to eke out a living somehow.”
Quari Akhlaque Ahmad Jamali, general secretary of the Jamiat Ulema in Malegaon, said that the long wait for justice had tired people out, and many of them had moved on with their lives. And so, it had become difficult to trace each of the victims. But he added, “Our council will go in appeal against the discharge of the accused.”
Moving on in Malegaon
Some three centuries ago, Malegaon used to be known as Maliwadi. Mali in Marathi means gardener, so a hamlet of gardeners it came to be. It is said that the hamlet was gifted to Peshwa commander Naro Shankar Rajebahadur for his valour in the battles fought by the Marathas in the north. He built a fort there in 1740 and the artisans involved settled down nearby.
After the fall of the Maratha empire in 1818, Malegaon soon became a weavers’ town as Muslim artisans skilled in handloom operations came here to escape British repression in north India. Now a city, it has more than 3 lakh powerlooms, with workers earning about Rs5,000 per week. The looms run 24x7, except on Fridays. Textiles from here find their way to cloth factories in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
The city is situated on the banks of the Girna river, along the Mumbai-Agra National Highway. Another river—the Mosam—runs through the city. While Muslims dominate within the city, outer Malegaon has a majority of Hindus. That divide is reflected in the representatives they elect as well—Muhammad Ismail Abdul Khalique of the AIMIM and Shiv Sena minister Dadaji Bhuse, a five-time MLA. The city has seen violence—riots in 2001, followed by bomb blasts in 2006 and 2008, which killed six people and injured more than a hundred. But the city seems to have taken it all in its stride. Since the 2008 blasts (all seven accused in the case were acquitted last year), the city has become a municipal corporation, got its first public hospital and a flyover. The number of hospitals has increased, so has the number of doctors, said Khaleel Abbas, a journalist with the local Urdu evening newspaper Sham Nama. “Schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education have come to Malegaon, and the younger generation is keen to study in English even while learning Urdu,” he added.
Case history
Malegaon may have transitioned, but it stays tethered to its past because of the case trial. As Ahmad had mentioned, the ATS first arrested nine Muslim men in the 2006 blasts case—Noorul Huda Samsoudoha, Shabbir Ahmad Masiullah, Raees Ahmad Rajjab Ali Mansuri, Salman Farsi Abdul Latif Aimi, Farogh Iqbal Ahmad Magdumi, Mohammad Ali Aalm Anamat Ali Shaikh, Asif Khan Bashir Khan, Mohammad Zahid Abdul Ansari and Abrar Ahmed Ghulam Ahmed—accusing them of belonging to the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India. When the CBI took over in 2007, they backed the ATS’s claims. But after the case went to the NIA in 2011, it revealed that the 2006 Malegaon blasts were an act of saffron terror. The NIA, which had arrested Swami Aseemanand in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case, claimed that Aseemanand had confessed to the role of a Hindu right-wing organisation in the Malegaon blasts. Based on that confession, the NIA arrested Rajendra Chaudhary, Dhan Singh, Manohar Narwaria and Lokesh Sharma. It also stated that it had no evidence against the nine Muslim men, following which they were discharged in 2016. The Special MCOCA Court judge, while discharging the Muslim accused, had found fault with the ATS’s argument that the accused had carried out the blast with the intention of creating communal disharmony. The judge had observed that had the accused any intention of starting riots, they would have planted bombs on Ganesh idol immersion day, which was just a few days before the day of the blasts. “It seems to me highly impossible that the accused, who are from the Muslim community, would have decided to kill their own people to create disharmony in two communities, that, too, on the holy day of Shab-e-Barat,” he said. The judge added that the accused became a scapegoat because they had criminal antecedents.
In September 2025, a special trial court in Mumbai framed 19 charges against the four accused arrested by the NIA. The four appealed against the order in the High Court. Two appeals were filed by two accused each—one argued by senior advocate Girish Kulkarni and another by senior advocate Kaushik Mhatre. The appeals said that the arrests had been made primarily on the basis of Aseemanand’s confession, which had been later rejected by a trial court in Hyderabad as being coerced and hence inadmissible.
In a detailed order on April 22, 2026, the High Court bench headed by Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice S.C. Chandak said that diagonally opposite stories in the chargesheets filed by the ATS and the NIA lead nowhere. “... there is no sufficient material on record against the appellants. The special judge did not apply his judicial mind to the materials laid before him and considered materials which are not admissible in evidence to frame charges against the appellants. The order dated September 30, 2025, framing charges against them is set aside and the appellants are discharged,” read the order.
Advocate Irfana Ahmad, who had represented the Muslim accused, said that she was already in talks with the Jamiat to file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the order. “The High Court order is like a hanging sword over the first batch of the accused (the ones she represented),” she said.
Former top cop K.P. Raghuvanshi, who was ATS chief at the time of the 2006 blasts, told THE WEEK that he stood by the ATS investigation. When asked whether the NIA was under pressure, he merely said, “What can I say, they did what they did.” During his second stint as ATS chief (June 2009-March 2010), as per Raghuvanshi’s biography Troubleshooter, a senior UPA minister asked him to arrest RSS leader Indresh Kumar in the 2008 blast case. Raghuvanshi bluntly told him that there was no evidence to make such an arrest. Before his tenure as ATS chief ended, Raghuvanshi received a couple more calls from the minister with the same demand. More than a year after their first conversation, the NIA took over the investigation of the 2006 blasts.
Senior defence counsel Kaushik Mhatre stated that the NIA had conducted a fresh investigation under the garb of further investigation, which is inadmissible in law. “The vast material brought on record by the ATS was completely overturned by the NIA, which took a U-turn by arranging a totally new set of accused persons and giving clean chit to the Muslims,” he said. “This is termed as de novo investigation, which cannot be done by any agency without the order of either the Supreme Court or High Court.”
The NIA spokesperson did not respond to THE WEEK’s queries, neither did additional solicitor general Anil Singh on whether the NIA plans to file an appeal against the discharge order.