Ahmedabad, July 7 (IANS) Following the Gujarat High Court’s decision to uphold the death sentences and life imprisonment for 49 accused in the 2008 Ahmedabad serial bomb blasts case, retired Deputy Commissioner of Police Abhay Chudasama, who was part of the Ahmedabad Crime Branch investigation, said the case was solved through extensive fieldwork, coordinated investigations and the collection of a vast body of evidence from across the country.

Recalling the circumstances at the time on Tuesday, Chudasama said the Ahmedabad attacks came after bomb blasts in Jaipur and several other Indian cities, many of which had remained unsolved.

“When the blasts took place in 2008, there had also been blasts in Jaipur just before the Ahmedabad attacks. Even before that, blasts had occurred in several other cities across India, but none of those cases had been solved,” he said.

He said the Ahmedabad Crime Branch immediately constituted multiple investigation teams and made significant progress within weeks.

“When the Ahmedabad blasts took place, the Ahmedabad Crime Branch worked very hard. We formed multiple teams, and within 20 days we managed to arrest several key accused and unravelled the entire case,” Chudasama said.

According to him, the investigation subsequently helped uncover the wider operations of the Indian Mujahideen across the country.

“During the interrogation of these accused, all the bomb blasts carried out by the Indian Mujahideen across the country were detected. For this, the Crime Branch worked continuously for four months. We filed all the charge sheets, and four different investigating officers were appointed for different aspects of the case,” he said.

Chudasama said investigators continued to pursue the case during the trial and appellate stages while coordinating with police forces and security agencies nationwide.

“The trial of the case also continued for a very long time, and sustained efforts were made throughout. Even after that, when the matter went into appeal, continuous follow-up was maintained. We also gathered a great deal of information from across India that had not previously been linked together. Working with all the agencies, we shared information with one another. As a result, everyone received valuable information, and we also received considerable cooperation from police forces across the country,” he said.

“In this way, the entire case was solved. After that, as you would have seen, not a single blast took place in India,” he added.

Explaining how investigators built the prosecution’s case, Chudasama said the enquiry relied on a broad range of documentary, forensic and circumstantial evidence.

“In the case, we had a large amount of evidence, not just documents. For example, if they had rented houses, we collected evidence relating to those rentals. If they had purchased mobile phones, we collected evidence of those purchases. Wherever they had provided identification, we obtained evidence of that. We gathered evidence from hotels where they had stayed or from houses where they had lived. Their mobile phone records also provided us with a great deal of information, helping us identify where their links extended across India,” he said.

“After compiling all this evidence, when we filed the chargesheet, it became a solid and strong case,” he added.

Chudasama served as a senior officer in the Ahmedabad Crime Branch during the investigation and was among the officers associated with the probe into the serial blasts.

The investigation involved multiple teams, extensive inter-state coordination and the examination of thousands of documents and witnesses before a special court convicted 49 accused in February 2022.

On Tuesday, the High Court upheld the special court’s judgment, confirming the death penalty for 38 convicts and life imprisonment for 11 others.

The court also directed compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the families of those killed, Rs 5 lakh to victims who suffered grievous injuries and Rs 1 lakh to those who sustained simple injuries.

–IANS

mys/rad