Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Witnesses neither natural nor truthful, says defence counsel

Staff Reporter

`Prosecution version has inherent improbabilities'

Coimbatore: Defence counsel in the Coimbatore serial blasts case on Tuesday submitted that the witnesses presented by the prosecution in respect of the West Sambandam Road pineapple-laden pushcart explosion were neither truthful nor natural in their narrations or conduct.

Defence counsel Bhavani B. Mohan along with P. Thirumalairajan and Mohammed Abubacker submitted their arguments before the judge of the Special Court for Bomb Blast Cases, K. Uthirapathy. T. Balasundaram and T.A. Selvaraj represented the prosecution. More than 50 persons were killed and over 250 sustained injuries in the serial blasts of February 14, 1998.

The defence said the two undertrials were innocent and falsely implicated in the case by the investigating agency.

Hence it appealed to the court to completely reject the prosecution version, citing inherent improbabilities in it.

The prosecution had relied on the depositions of two eyewitnesses, a scrap merchant and an autorickhaw driver for establishing that one of the undertrials in judicial custody and another absconding accused had assigned the job to the other undertrials implicated in this case.

According to the prosecution, at a place in Saramedu, the job of triggering the bomb-fitted pushcart on West Sambandam Road in R.S. Puram, where BJP leader L.K. Advani was to address a public meeting on that day, was assigned to these two undertrials.

It was also unlikely that the two witnesses, one of them belonging to Appanaickenpatti, 25 km away, could have been in Saramedu to witness the conversation assigning the task.

Portions of the depositions by both the witnesses were similar, especially with regard to their presence at the spot around 2 p.m.

One of the witnesses had deposed that his moped developed a snag and the other claimed that his vehicle tyres got deflated, to establish their presence there.

While one witness said that there were houses on either side of the street in that location the other stated that there was only one house. Both these versions were falsified by documentary evidence, which proved that there were only bushes and trenches there.

The defence questioned as to how these undertrials could have managed to bring the explosives-laden pushcart to the targeted place, especially when police admittedly were on high alert conducting extensive searches at check posts at various places in the city. Mr. Mohan argued that two witnesses who deposed having seen the blast were stock witnesses used for falsely implicating the accused.

Apart from the casualties and injuries the blast had damaged 16 vehicles but no attempt was made by the investigating agency to seize the vehicles as some of the injured persons had deposed that it was either a car or a tempo that had exploded.

Chemical analysis

Defence questioned as to how the prosecution came to the conclusion that these damaged vehicles were not the carriers of explosives.

Relying on the chemical analysis report, Mr. Mohan argued that the portion of a rim, which according to the case was recovered from a compound wall of a bank near the place of occurrence, was not sent for chemical analysis.

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