2006 Mumbai Blast Acquittals Expose Political Abuse of Law Across Governments
Twelve Muslim Men Jailed for the Terror Attack Freed After Witness Found False
July 27, 2025
Twelve men have been acquitted in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case after spending nearly 19 years in prison, based on testimony later exposed as fabricated by a repeat witness used in multiple terror cases. From the perspective of citizens, two successive state governments and four political parties appear complicit in the betrayal of justice — first the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for enacting a draconian law, and then the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) for using that law to frame Muslim men.
On July 11, 2006, seven bomb blasts went off in the first-class compartments of Mumbai’s suburban trains during the evening rush hour. The attack killed 189 people and injured over 800. The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) quickly arrested several Muslim men, accusing them of planning the blasts with help from banned Pakistan-based organisations. The investigation was declared a success, and the arrests were publicised as a breakthrough in national security enforcement.
The Congress-NCP government invoked the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) to prosecute the case. The men were denied bail under MCOCA provisions and subjected to long detention and custodial interrogation. In 2015, 12 of the accused were convicted by the special MCOCA court. Five were sentenced to death and seven to life imprisonment.
The prosecution’s case was built on confessions and the account of a man who claimed to have seen some of the accused board a train with suspicious bags. Years later, an RTI revealed that this key witness had testified in multiple unrelated terror cases, describing scenes and locations that did not exist, as reported by The Quint. His testimony was entirely false. The witness had been repeatedly used by the police to prop up fabricated charges.
The Bombay High Court found that the prosecution had utterly failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. The court noted that the key witnesses lacked credibility, the identification parades were dubious, and the confessional statements had been obtained through torture, according to India Today.
All twelve men were acquitted. One of them, Kamal Ahmed, had already died in prison during the pandemic. His son was six when he was arrested.
The real perpetrators of the 2006 bombings have never been identified or brought to justice.
The false charges were likely driven by two forces. The first was pressure to show that the case had been solved. The second was the belief, reinforced through years of political messaging and media narrative, that Muslims are the default suspects in terror cases. The bombings caused national panic and political urgency. Investigators turned to the most convenient targets. The arrests gave the appearance of swift action. The narrative of Muslim involvement made the case believable to the public.
The police apparently acted within a system that rewards results, encourages profiling and treats certain identities as evidence.
The law used to frame these men was passed by the Shiv Sena and BJP government in Maharashtra in 1999. The law allows police confessions to be used as evidence, makes it harder to obtain bail and weakens judicial oversight. It apparently became the preferred tool for charging Muslim men in terror cases, whether or not there was credible evidence.
The Congress and NCP government that came to power afterwards appears to have made full use of this law. It filed charges under MCOCA, produced fabricated confessions and presented a false witness.
One government gave the police a dangerous weapon. The other used it against the innocent.
This was a direct violation of natural justice. Punishment was handed down without a fair hearing grounded in credible and independent evidence. The legal process became a scripted state performance with a predetermined outcome. The courtroom served only as a formality. The principles of fair hearing and presumption of innocence were dismantled by design.
The Indian constitutional model is based on limited and accountable government, meaning that state power must always remain within the boundaries of law and rights. However, laws like MCOCA reverse that principle. They give the state the power to bypass scrutiny and shift the burden onto the accused.
We could say that the Shiv Sena-BJP government created a law tailored for abuse, and the Congress-NCP government deployed it without restraint. The Constitution was set aside by both.
The behaviour of the ATS in this case broke every norm expected in the Weberian model of bureaucracy. This model, developed by sociologist and jurist Max Weber, holds that state officials must act with neutrality, follow clearly defined rules, rely on verifiable evidence and remain insulated from political or communal pressures.
The 12 acquittals came after nearly two decades of struggle, and only because legal and civil efforts continued to expose the falsehoods.
Meanwhile, the families of the victims of the 2006 blasts still have no answers. The families of the accused have lost decades of their lives. Both were betrayed by the state. This betrayal will continue, under any party, unless the public insists on truth over appearance and justice over control.
Governments, it seems, do not stop abusing power out of principle. They stop only when they are compelled to explain themselves.
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