A special TADA court in Mumbai has dismissed two applications filed by the accused in the 1993 serial blasts case, who had urged that confessional statements recorded during earlier trials should not be considered in the present phase. The court emphasized that a change of judge does not allow reopening or re-adjudicating issues already settled in previous stages of the proceedings.
The applications were filed by Mohd Shoeb Qureshi and Mohd Yusuf Ismail Shaikh, both of whom were arrested in 2022 and are among the seven accused currently on trial. The earlier two phases of the proceedings had already concluded against more than 190 individuals, including Yakub Memon, Abu Salem, and Mustafa Dossa, between 1993 and 2017. Many crucial confessions and evidentiary materials were brought before the court during those stages, some of which had already been challenged by the accused in the second phase but were upheld by the special court.
The defense lawyers for Qureshi and Shaikh contended that under Section 15 of the TADA Act and Section 30 of the Indian Evidence Act, confessions could only be used if the accused were charged and tried jointly. Since the two applicants were brought into the case decades later, they insisted they could not be bound by confessions made in earlier trials.
Opposing the plea, Special Public Prosecutor Deepak Salvi argued that the two accused were not peripheral figures but “main conspirators” who had attended meetings in Dubai with Dawood Ibrahim and undergone arms training in Pakistan. He also pointed out that similar objections had already been raised and dismissed in the second phase, with appeals against those orders still pending before the Supreme Court.
Special Judge VD Kedar concurred with the prosecution, ruling that confessions proved in earlier trials remained admissible and could not be discarded. He stressed that judicial discipline does not allow a coordinate bench to reopen matters already decided in the same case. Accordingly, the applications were dismissed as lacking merit, ensuring that confessional evidence from prior proceedings will remain part of the ongoing trial.
