‘Overburdened’ Bombay HC adjourns hearing on death confirmation pleas of 7/11 train blast convicts

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The Bombay High Court on Monday adjourned the hearing on pleas seeking confirmation of death sentences of five convicts in the 7/11 local trains serial blasts case as the bench assigned to hear the matter was “overburdened with work”.
Sixteen years ago, on July 11, 2006, a series of bombs had ripped through seven western suburban coaches, killing 189 commuters and injuring 824.
After a trial of over eight years, a special court under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) in October, 2015 had awarded death penalty to five accused and life terms to seven others.
Thereafter, the Maharashtra government approached the HC seeking the confirmation of death row granted to the five convicts; the latter, too, filed appeals challenging their convictions.
On Monday, special counsel and senior advocate Raja Thakare told a bench of Justice R D Dhanuka and Justice M G Sewlikar that the hearing on confirmation pleas would take at least five to six months as there were 92 prosecution witnesses and over 50 defence witnesses. Evidence in the case ran over 169 volumes and judgments of death sentence went into nearly 2,000 pages.
The bench, which had been assigned to hear the pleas, then asked advocate Aditya Mehta, lawyer for one of the convicts who had filed an appeal, to approach Chief Justice Dipankar Datta seeking assignment of another bench, as the current bench was “overburdened”.
Senior advocate Thakare responded that the confirmation pleas earlier came up before three benches, including former judges Justices Naresh Patil, B P Dharmadhikari and S S Jadhav, and that the hearings could not take place since the judges were due to retire.
The lawyers informed the bench led by Justice Dhanuka that they had already sought assignment of special bench and that is how the present bench was assigned. “Yes, but we are already overloaded. I will simply place this matter for hearing in August for directions and final hearing,” Justice Dhanuka said.
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