November 30, 2006 was a big day for the Anti-Terrorist Squad. After 142 days of the 7/11 blasts, around 10 officers in uniform and badges lugged 13 copies of the gargantuan 10, 667-page chargesheet in black shopping bags for the 13 accused. The 15-odd ATS officers in the MCOCA court looked positively triumphant.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Naval Bajaj engaged TV crews with precise sound bites: “166 ATS officers, including four assistant commissioners of police, 15 police inspectors, 17 assistant police inspectors and 34 police sub-inspectors and 96 constables and…134 zonal officers were involved in doing the ground verification. 3,82, 548 man hours have been spent in the investigation…”

Lawyers and police officers experienced a flashback of sorts — November 4, 1993, when the chargesheet in the serial bomb blasts was filed. “It was an unprecedented case. We had got two lorries full of chargesheets filled in gunnysacks meant for rice or sugar. Judge JN Patel then had called each of the 134 accused to the dock and asked them to pick up a copy of the chargesheet. The sacks were so heavy that the accused would struggle to get it off the dock. It was a very amusing sight,” recalls S Walishetty, one of the chief investigating officers of the 1993 bomb blast case before the CBI took over.

That, and perhaps, the language and tenor is where the similarities end. Seemingly inspired by the 1993 chargesheet, this one begins with an exhaustive description of the 7/11 blasts. It then tries to explain the entire conspiracy of the blasts, allegedly hatched in 1999 by absconding accused Azam Cheema, Faisal Shaikh and Asif Khan alias Junaid for waging war with the nation and speading terror.

... contd.