7 accused in Malegaon blast case acquitted, two 'wanted' at large. Who are they?

While seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, including former BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, were acquitted by a Maharashtra court after 17 years of the incident on Thursday, two other accused are still "wanted" by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), who is probing the case.

Sandeep Dange and Ram Kalsangra, who are still untraceable, will have to face trial when they are arrested, officials said.

Dange and Kalsangra are still shown as wanted accused, and according to the investigators, they were the ones who planted the two-wheeler bike with the bomb strapped on it outside a shop, Shakil Goods Transport at Bhiku chowk in the heart of Malegaon town in Nashik district of Maharashtra.

According to former BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, after she gave up her worldly materialistic life to become a Sadhvi, she gave away her two-wheeler to Kalsangra. However, Kalsangra along with Dange could never be traced all these years.

There came about a twist in the case in December 2016, when a suspended police officer claimed that two key accused, Sandeep Dange and Ram Kalsangra, are "no more" but are still being shown as alive by police officers.

This claim was made in an affidavit before a Solapur court in August 2016 by one Mahboob Mujawar, who was accused in a separate case of criminal intimidation under the Arms Act. Subsequently, Kalsangra’s family demanded a thorough investigation into the allegations of murder.

In May 2016, it was reported that Dange was spotted in Nepal on several occasions. But none of the agencies could arrest him.

THE ACQUITTAL OF SEVEN ACCUSED

Noting that mere suspicion cannot take the case forward and that the prosecution failed to establish the allegations against the accused beyond reasonable doubt, Special Judge AK Lahoti acquitted the seven accused, including Sadhvi Pragya and Colonel Purohit.

In a stark remark, the court said, "Terrorism has no religion, but conviction cannot be based on moral grounds."

Apart from Pragya Thakur and Purohit, the others who have been acquitted are Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyay, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi alias Shankaracharya, and Sameer Kulkarni.

Six people were killed and more than 100 injured when an explosive device strapped to a motorcycle (LML Freedom bike) went off in Malegaon, a town with a sizeable Muslim population, on September 29, 2008. The blast took place during the holy month of Ramzan.

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