26 April, New Delhi – Jamaat-e-Islami Hind welcomes the Special MCOCA Court verdict discharging the nine accused of engineering the September 2006 bomb blasts in the city of Malegaon in Maharashtra.

The Secretary General of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Muhammad Salim Engineer said that: ‘’the latest verdict acquitting nine Muslim youth of terror charges is a vindication of the long held opinion by Jamaat-e-Islami Hind that Muslim youth are being arrested wrongfully on fabricated charges and it is part of a deep rooted conspiracy by some anti-national elements to demoralize Muslims, to create a communal wedge between communities and shield the real terrorists.

JIH demands that the government should withdraw all false charges against Muslim youth and immediately release all who have been arrested without any solid evidence and incarcerated merely on the basis of suspicion. Jamaat also appeals to the Indian media not to hold media trials and pronounce anyone to be a terrorist merely on the basis of statements by the intelligence agencies. Jamaat demands adequate compensation and a respectable government job for each of the terror acquitted.

The government must redouble its efforts in finding the real culprits as even after 10 years, the relatives of those who lost their lives in the blasts at ‘Hamidiya Masjid’ and ‘Bada Kabrastan’ are yet to get justice. The officers who were guilty of falsely implicating these youth must be held accountable for their incompetence and dereliction of duty. Amending Article 197 of CrPC and prosecuting the guilty police officers will go a long way in preventing such travesty of justice in the future’’.