2006 Malegaon blast case: Bombay high court clears 4; now no one on trial

In a verdict that marks a sombre milestone in India’s judicial history, the Bombay High Court on Wednesday discharged the last four remaining accused in the 2006 Malegaon serial blasts case. With this ruling, the pursuit of justice for the 31 people killed and over 300 injured during the explosions at Hamidia Masjid and Bada Kabrastan has reached a total legal impasse. Two decades after the terror attack, the Indian state finds itself in the haunting position of having no one on trial for one of the most devastating acts of violence in the region's history.

For the families of the victims, this is not just a legal "discharge but a profound erasure. Many of those who died were congregants at the Hamidia Masjid, gathered for Friday prayers and the festival of Shab-e-Baraat. Their lives were cut short in a moment of worship, and for twenty years, their survivors have been shuffled through a maze of competing investigation narratives. The High Court’s decision, delivered by Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Shyam Chandak, underscores a fundamental collapse in the prosecution's narrative, noting that the "diagonally opposite" investigations conducted by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) failed to produce a cohesive basis for a trial.

The trajectory of the Malegaon case has been a saga of shifting institutional lenses that left families caught in the middle. In the immediate aftermath, the ATS arrested nine Muslim men, alleging a SIMI-led conspiracy. These men spent years behind bars, their lives and reputations shattered, only for the NIA to take over in 2011 and claim the blasts were actually the work of right-wing extremists. By 2016, the original nine were discharged for a lack of evidence, only for the NIA’s subsequent case against the Hindu suspects to face similar scrutiny for lacking forensic depth and credible witnesses.

Ultimately, the law requires evidence, and the court found that after two decades, the state simply had none left to offer. But for the residents of Malegaon, the legal technicalities offer little comfort. The inability to secure a single conviction after twenty years of investigative flip-flops leaves a void where closure should be. While three suspects remain "absconding," the bitter reality for the victims' families is that the 2006 blasts have effectively transitioned from a pursuit of justice into a cold monument to institutional failure. In the eyes of the court, the files are closing; in the hearts of Malegaon, the questions remain as loud as the day the bombs went off.