Two accused in 2008 Malegaon blast case granted bail

Mumbai: A Special NIA court on Tuesday granted bail to Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Suhakar Dwivedi, two prime accused in the September 2008 Malegaon blast case, on grounds of parity. The two were granted bail along with a surety of Rs 500,000 each and other conditions. Chaturvedi and Dwivedi, alias Dayanand Pandey, had filed for bail after the Supreme Court granted bail to Lt. Col. Prasad S. Purohit, one of the main accused in the case, last month. Earlier, another prime accused in the case, Sadhvi Pragnya Singh Thakur, had been released on bail by the Bombay High Court on health and other grounds after nearly nine years in custody. A powerful bomb exploded near the crowded Nooraji Mosque in Malegaon on the evening of September 29, 2008, killing six and injuring 100 others, around 300 km north of Mumbai in Nashik district. It was the second such blast in the Muslim-dominated power loom town which was earlier shaken by a similar blast on September 8, 2006, which claimed 37 lives and injured more than 250. Initially, the (Malegaon 2008) case was probed by the Maharashtra Police and the Anti-Terrorist Squad, and later in April 2011 it was taken over the National Investigation Agency. The investigators had charge-sheeted 14 accused in the case, including two - Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange - who are absconding so far. The involvement of some of the accused was found in other terror acts in the country.