Malegaon Case: Special NIA Court Asks Pragya Thakur To ‘Appear In Court Or Face Action’ (image-twitter/sadhvipragyag)
A special NIA court has asked BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur to appear in the court on Tuesday onwards for recording the statements. The court has warned the BJP MP that necessary actions will be taken if she fails to appear in the court, reports NDTV.
Special judge A K Lahoti passed this order on Friday who will be recording the statements of the accused in the Malegaon 2008 blast case. She passed this direction while granting Thakur’s plea for exemption for the day on medical grounds.
Pragya Thakur along with six others are facing trials in the case under the provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and Indian Penal Code (IPC). The National Investigation Agency was currently recording statements of the accused under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
The court observed that Pragya Thakur and some other accused are not attending the court regularly on the fixed date.
“It is observed that the present accused (Thakur) and some other accused are not attending the court regularly on fixed dates. Time to time, their exemption application for the reasons put forth by them are also considered by the court. It is also observed that some accused are residents of other states and while moving the application they used to mention that they used to face the difficulty to get the tickets at the 11th hour,” the court said, reports Indian Express.
However, in order to overcome the aforesaid difficulty, the court has said that the dates will be given beforehand and hence exemption on the same ground will not be considered.
Though the court has accepted Pragya Thakur’s plea, filed on the ground that she was under medication, the court has directed her to remain present from February 27 onwards “without fail, else, necessary steps will be taken”.
The court has also said that all the accused must remain present on the fixed dates given to them till the completion of the recording of the statement.
“Needless to say they (accused) could stay in Mumbai and if there is ill health, they could get medication in Mumbai also,” the court noted.
On September 29, 2008, the explosion in Malegaon, a town about 200 km from Mumbai in north Maharashtra resulted in the killing of six, and over 100 were injured. The case was initially probed by the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad and later it was handed over to the NIA in 2011.
