Abdul Wahid Shaikh, the only person acquitted in the 2006 Mumbai train bomb blasts case by a special court in 2015, has demanded a fresh investigation into the case. On Tuesday, a day after the Bombay High Court acquitted the remaining 12 accused, Shaikh said the government should form a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by a High Court judge to find the real culprits behind the blasts.
Speaking to PTI, Shaikh said, “The government should re-investigate the case by setting up a Special Investigation Team to be headed by a High Court judge to ensure that the real perpetrators behind the train bomb blasts are arrested.”
Shaikh spent nine years in jail before he was cleared of all charges. The 2015 court verdict had sentenced five of the accused to death and seven others to life imprisonment. One of the death row convicts died in 2021. On Monday, the Bombay High Court overturned these sentences and said the prosecution had completely failed to prove the case. The court added that it was hard to believe the accused were involved in the crime.
Now a school teacher, Shaikh has written a book titled Begunah Qaidi (Innocent Prisoner) based on his time in jail. In the book, he talks about the torture he and the others faced from the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). He claims they were forced to give false confessions.
“Though very late, these people finally got justice. The High Court verdict exposed the falsehood of ATS,” Shaikh said. He also asked the government to apologise for the faulty investigation, pay ₹19 crore as compensation to the 12 men (₹1 crore each), and provide them with government jobs and houses.
Shaikh also remembered ACP Vinod Bhat, one of the investigating officers in the case. In his book, he wrote that Bhat was under pressure to create false evidence and witnesses. “Today, the soul of ACP Bhat must be happy. He ended his life in August 2006 due to pressure to frame innocent persons on the same railway track where bomb blasts had occurred,” Shaikh said. He claimed Bhat’s death was marked as an accident at the Dadar railway police station.
He added that while the wrongly accused suffered for 19 years, justice has finally come, and now it is important to find the real attackers. “We want justice for the families of those who died or were injured in the blasts too,” he said.
