A special court in Panchkula acquitted Swami Aseemanand and three others in the Samjhauta Express blast case which had left 68 people, mostly Pakistanis, dead in 2007. All the four accused, Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary have been acquitted, said NIA counsel Rajan Malhotra.

The blast took place near Panipat in Haryana on February 18, 2007, when the train was on its way to Attari in Amritsar, the last station on the Indian side.

Aseemanand, who was already out on bail, and three others, who were in judicial custody, were present in the court when NIA special judge Jagdeep Singh pronounced the verdict. Before the verdict, the judge dismissed the plea filed by a Pakistani woman for examining eyewitnesses from her country. The court ruled that the plea of the Pakistani woman was devoid of any merit, Malhotra said.

Pakistani woman Rahila Wakeel’s counsel Momin Malik said he would decide on the next course of action after talking to his client. He added that he was expecting the court to defer the verdict on the blast case after giving its verdict on his client’s plea.

The 67-year-old Aseemanand was earlier acquitted in two other terror cases - the May 2007 bombing at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad and the October 2007 blasts at Ajmer Sharif Dargah in Rajasthan. The blasts in Samjhauta Express had ripped apart two coaches of the cross-border train, connecting New Delhi to Lahore. The Haryana police had registered a case, but the probe was handed over to the National Investigation Agency in July 2010.

The NIA had filed a chargesheet in July 2011 against eight persons for their alleged roles in the terror attack. Of the eight, Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary appeared before the court and faced trial. Sunil Joshi, the alleged mastermind of the attack, was shot dead near his home in Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas district in December 2007.

The three other accused - Ramchandra Kalsangra, Sandeep Dange and Amit - could not be arrested and were declared proclaimed offenders. The NIA had charged the accused with murder and criminal conspiracy, and under the Explosive Substances Act and the Railways Act.

According to Aseemanand’s counsel Mukesh Garg, the court has said that the NIA failed to prove any of its charges against the accused and the evidence against them was treated as not sufficient. Therefore, the court acquitted them. There were 299 witnesses in the case and 224 of them were examined.

Pakistan summoned the Indian High Commissioner to lodge a protest against the acquittal of all four accused in the blast case. Formal demarches were lodged regularly with India on the lack of progress and acquittal of the accused in other cases, the statement said.

Timeline of the blast case

February 18, 2007: A blast in Samjhauta Express near Diwana in Haryana’s Panipat kills 68 people, mostly Pakistani nationals.

February 20, 2007: Haryana Police constitute a special investigation team to probe the case.

July 29, 2010: National Investigation Agency takes over the probe from Haryana Police.

June 20, 2011: NIA files chargesheet in Panchkula court.

July 2014: Aseemanand gets bail.

March 6, 2019: Final arguments in Samjhauta blast case conclude, court reserves verdict.

March 11, 2019: Pakistani woman Rahila Wakeel, daughter of blast victim Muhammad Wakeel, moves court for examination of eyewitnesses from her country.

March 18, 2019: Arguments conclude on the Pakistani woman’s plea.

March 20, 2019: Anti-terror court dismisses her petition, acquits four accused - Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary.