Mumbai, India – Today, Thursday, July 31, 2025, a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Mumbai is expected to give its decision in the very important and complicated 2008 Malegaon bomb case. The decision comes about 17 years after a bomb went off in a busy area of Malegaon in Maharashtra’s Nashik region, killing six people and hurting 101 more.
This was a big turning point since it was one of the first terror acts in India where a group of people who were thought to be Hindu extremists were put on trial. Pragya Singh Thakur, a former BJP MP, and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, a current army officer, are two of the most well-known people who are being implicated. The people who are being tried in this protracted case are being charged under strict parts of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), which is India’s main anti-terrorism law, as well as several parts of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
A Timeline of the Investigation and Controversy Surrounding the 2008 Malegaon Blast
On September 29, 2008, a bomb went off at a chowk in a part of Malegaon that is mostly Muslim. The timing was very important because it occurred during the holy month of Ramadan and soon before the Hindu Navratri celebration. Investigators thought that the criminals selected this time on purpose to stir up sentiments in the community.
The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) took over the first inquiry from the local police. The ATS investigation found that the improvised explosive device (IED) was hidden on an LML Freedom motorcycle. The motorcycle’s registration number was phony, and its engine and chassis numbers had been deleted, which was very important. Forensic work was able to bring these numbers back to life, which helped find Pragya Singh Thakur as the motorcycle’s owner. On October 23, 2008, she was arrested.
After questioning her, the ATS detained more people, bringing the total number of people implicated to 11, including Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit. The ATS said that the people who were arrested had started a group called Abhinav Bharat and charged them with breaking the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA). The ATS said in its January 2009 chargesheet that the accused conducted the blast “in revenge for terrorist acts by Muslim men.”
NIA Takeover and Legal Problems
In 2011, the case was given to the newly constituted National Investigation Agency (NIA). The NIA kept looking into the case, and the people who were accused of MCOCA charges fought back, especially since confessions made under MCOCA can be used as evidence.
In a major turn of events, the NIA submitted a new charge sheet in 2016, which caused a lot of controversy because it dropped the charges under MCOCA. The NIA said that the ATS’s use of MCOCA was “questionable” and that they had uncovered “many holes” in the evidence the ATS had gathered against Thakur. They said that strong evidence only existed against seven of the eleven people implicated. The NIA said that the motorcycle belonged to Thakur, but that Ramchandra Kalsangra, who was on the run, had it before the bomb.
The NIA asked the special court to remove Pragya Singh Thakur from the list of accused, but on December 27, 2017, the court said it was hard to believe her assertion that she had nothing to do with the bomb. The court agreed with the NIA’s request to drop the MCOCA charges, but it said that seven of the accused—Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Major (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Sameer Kulkarni, Sudhakar Onkarnath Chaturvedi, Ajay Rahirkar, and Sudhakar Dwivedi—would still be tried under the UAPA, IPC, and the Explosive Substances Act of 1908. Three of the defendants were let off because there wasn’t enough proof, while two others simply had to go to trial under the Arms Act.
The Long-Awaited Decision
The trial for the seven people charged started in 2018 and ended on April 19, 2025, after 323 prosecution witnesses were called to testify, 37 of whom went hostile. Then, the matter was put on hold for a decision.
The accused is charged with UAPA sections 16 (committing a terrorist act) and 18 (conspiring to commit a terrorist act), as well as IPC sections 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt), and 153 (a) (promoting enmity between two religious groups).
In its closing arguments, the NIA said that the Malegaon bomb was planned by the conspirators to scare a part of the Muslim population, disrupt important services, make tensions between communities worse, and harm the state’s internal security. Today, the ruling is anticipated to put an end to this long-running and politically heated case.