Rajinder Nagarkoti
Tribune News Service
Panchkula, March 9
The trial in the 2007 Samjhauta blast case resumed on Friday. The newly-designated NIA court of Additional Sessions Judge Neerja Kulwant Kalson summoned four prosecution witnesses on April 6 and 7. The prosecution witnesses are officials of the NIA, who investigated the blasts.
The order of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to re-designate the NIA court was received recently.
The trial was stalled in December last year after Additional District and Sessions Judge Gulab Singh was transferred. The blasts had taken place on February 18, 2007, killing 68 people, mostly Pakistanis. The train was targeted as Pakistani Muslims used to travel by it, as per the NIA charge sheet.
Of 290 witnesses, 216 have already deposed. Of these, around 30 turned hostile. The NIA on June 20, 2011, had filed the charge sheet against Swami Aseemanand and four others in the Panchkula NIA court. In the charge sheet, filed before the special NIA court in Panchkula, the agency had accused Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Sunil Joshi (now dead), Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalasangra, alias Ramji, of hatching the conspiracy, which resulted in the blasts near the Dewana railway station in Panipat in February 2007.
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