Seventeen years is a long time to wait for justice or for vindication. But last week, in a courtroom far removed from the television studios that once declared them guilty, Lt Colonel Purohit, Pragya Thakur and five others were acquitted in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, citing lack of admissible evidence and procedural lapses too glaring to ignore.
The real story is that it took nearly 17 years to undo a lie that was never rooted in law, but in political imagination.
This wasn’t merely a legal defeat for the prosecution, but a quiet collapse of a much larger political narrative, one that sought quite deliberately to conflate Hindu identity, specifically Sanatan Dharma with terrorism.
Crucially, the court noted the disappearance of 13 key witness statements recorded under Section 164 of the CrPC, statements that the prosecution had once claimed were central to their case.
The witnesses, two of whom later turned hostile, claiming coercion by the ATS, were connected to conspiracy meetings where conversations purportedly on revenge on Muslims, a separate constitution for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ complete with a distinct ‘Bhagwa Flag’ and the formation of a Central Hindu Government (‘Aryawart’), and even an exile government concept like in Israel and Thailand, were allegedly held.
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Thirty-nine witnesses in total turned hostile. Thirteen of these had their statements recorded before a magistrate during the ATS’s initial investigation which, by legal standard, are admissible in the court and carry corroborative value.
These statements could have bolstered the prosecution’s case had they been preserved or used effectively.
And yet, despite years of media trial and public shaming, the original evidence simply could not be found.
Investigators compared them to the “Hindu Lashkar-e-Taiba.” The narrative was grotesque, but successful in shaping public opinion. It created headlines, divided voters and painted Hindu civilisational thought as inherently intolerant.
The most insidious outcome of this case was the ‘attempted intellectual annexation’ of Hinduism into the domain of terror.
The term “saffron terror” first gained traction in 2010, during the tenure of the Congress-led UPA government. It was amplified through selective arrests, sensational media leaks and emotionally-charged statements. The idea was simple, to show that terrorism wasn’t limited to radical Islamist outfits, ‘Hindus could be terrorists too.’
But here’s the problem: Justice cannot be manufactured to balance ideological scales.
Rather than sticking to the evidence, investigators leaned into the political winds. Sadhvi Pragya was arrested under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and spent nearly nine years in custody. Col Purohit, a serving military intelligence officer, was accused of providing RDX and plotting a ‘Hindu nation.’
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Yet after nearly two decades, there is no closure or conviction. Just years of reputational damage and institutional embarrassment.
Sanatan Dharma is not merely a religion; it is India’s civilisational backbone. To casually associate it with terrorism isn’t just intellectually dishonest, it is culturally reckless.
Unlike ideologies that define themselves through binary oppositions, the believer and the infidel, the saved and the damned. Sanatan Dharama does not offer a theology of war. It has no doctrine of crusade, no concept of conversion by force, and certainly no ambition to annihilate the “other.”
Leaders from the BJP and Shiv Sena have wasted no time in calling out what they believe was a malicious attempt to equate Hinduism with terrorism. Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma remarked, “Hindus by philosophy cannot be terrorists, Hindus and terror are two opposite concepts.” He viewed the verdict as vindication against a decade-long smear.
Others went further. BJP MP Dinesh Sharma accused the UPA government of “misusing government institutions” to manufacture a narrative. “Today, it has been proven that there is no such thing as ‘Hindu terrorism.’ But the Congress too responded, urging caution. MP Imran Masood asked, “Then who did it?” echoing public confusion over who will not be held accountable for the six lives lost. Imran Pratapgarhi of the Congress added, “This is a verdict, not justice.” Both insisted terrorism must not be framed through religious identity.
And perhaps, that’s the heart of the issue.
Now, the acquittals are final, the questions that remain are political and not legal: Who takes responsibility for framing people without proof? What happens when crucial evidence vanishes in a terror case? And most importantly, who will be held accountable for building a narrative that turned national security into a communal blame game?
The cost of this narrative experiment was enormous. Innocents spent years behind the bars. The Indian Army’s image was dragged through the mud. A spiritual tradition was branded suspect. And all of it was done in the name of “secular balance.”
Yet, justice was not delayed here. It was weaponised. If those who don’t understand it even now, risk repeating it maybe under a different community, a different name, and in a different political season.
By Shyna Gupta
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