The appeal, filed by Nisar Ahmed Sayyed Bilal and five others through advocate Mateen Shaikh, sought the quashing of the July 31 judgment of Special NIA Judge A.K. Lahoti.

Earlier, dismissing the investigators’ theory of “Saffron or Hindu terror”, the Special NIA court had given the benefit of the doubt to the accused while acquitting all seven of them.

Those set free by the trial court included Pragya Thakur, Lt. Col. Shrikant Purohit, Major (Retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sameer Kulkarni.

The explosion killed six people on September 29, 2008, and injured 101 in Malegaon, a communally sensitive town in Maharashtra, when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle detonated near a mosque during the holy month of Ramzan.

Earlier, soon after her acquittal, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur claimed that she was tortured for refusing to spread false information during the investigation.

She slammed the investigative process, alleging custodial torture, coercion, and politically motivated targeting by senior police officials.

The appeal filed in the High Court against the acquittal came at a time when the NIA is believed to be studying the acquittal order to take a call on the need or timing of an appeal against the verdict. Normally, a decision on filing a review petition is to be taken in 30 days, but the time limit for filing an appeal can be extended up to 90 days.

–IANS

rch/dpb