Mumbai: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) told the Bombay High Court that the observations in the order granting bail to dismissed cop Sachin Waze in the Antilia bomb scare and Mansukh Hiran murder case of 2021 are “purely based on surmises… and inferences at its whims and fancies’’ and totally against what the NIA chargesheet of Sept 3, 2021, states.
The NIA said the special trial judge added “facts and narrations which are not part of the chargesheet’’ and it also took umbrage at the “personal remarks’’ the special judge made on the “diligent investigation of the state police and NIA’’ and sought that they be expunged.
The NIA’s additional submissions say, “A vehicle laden with explosives was left on a public road in a densely populated residential locality, with a note threatening to blow up an entire family. That act was plainly likely to strike terror in the residents, passers-by and persons working in the area, and in the family named in the note.”
NIA told HC that it was a case of terror under the stringent anti-terror law, the UAPA, which stipulates stricter tests before granting bail to an accused. The NIA said, “The Statute does not permit the Court to carve out one offence, treat it as outside the UAPA, and grant bail on that footing.’’ The threat note itself warns that the next time the material would come fully connected, the NIA says, yet the trial court in its bail order holds that without a detonator the gelatin sticks were “useless’’ as submitted by the defence and observed that it “is not countered successfully by the prosecution”. “Accepting a defence version over the forensic material is impermissible at the stage of section 43D(5) UAPA”, the provisions governing bail under the special law, the NIA said.
The hearing will continue on Thursday.