After nearly seven years, the trial against 26/11 accused Abu Jundal will restart as the Bombay High Court quashes a 2018 order blocking proceedings. The court’s decision ends a long legal halt in one of India’s most significant terror cases.
Mumbai: The long-delayed trial in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case against accused Abu Jundal is finally set to begin again after almost seven years.
This comes after the Bombay High Court, on Monday, set aside a 2018 order of the trial court that had stopped the proceedings. The case had been on hold since that order.
A bench of Justice R.N. Laddha of the Bombay High Court heard petitions filed by the Delhi Police, the Ministry of Civil Aviation, and the Ministry of External Affairs.
These government bodies had challenged the trial court’s earlier direction that required them to give confidential documents to accused Abu Jundal.
After hearing all sides, the High Court stated,
“All petitions are allowed and the impugned order is quashed.”
This order has now cleared the way for the trial to restart in the special court.
Zabiuddin Ansari, also known as Abu Jundal, is accused of being one of the handlers who guided the ten Pakistani terrorists involved in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. He was deported from Saudi Arabia to India in 2012.
The 26/11 case against him had not moved forward since 2018 because he had asked the authorities to provide certain travel-related documents, claiming they were crucial for his defence.
Jundal had filed an application under Section 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), asking for official documents that he said would prove he was detained in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, before being brought to India.
However, the Delhi Police maintained that he was arrested only after he landed at Delhi airport.
In 2018, the trial court had accepted Jundal’s request and directed the government authorities to hand over the documents.
The Delhi Police and the two central ministries then approached the Bombay High Court, arguing that the trial court had misinterpreted Section 91 of the CrPC and gone beyond its legal limits.
Representing the government, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, and advocates Aayush Kedia and D.P. Singh argued that Section 91 gives only limited power to seek documents.
They pointed out that it cannot be used as a tool for what they called “roving or fishing enquiries.” The government also submitted that matters concerning national security, public interest, and foreign relations are valid reasons to withhold certain documents from disclosure.
The lawyers told the court that the trial court had failed to consider these important exceptions while passing its earlier order.
The government further relied on the legal principle of Mala Captus, Bene Detentus — meaning that even if a person is captured in the wrong way, their detention remains lawful if the arrest itself is valid.
This argument was used to justify that even if Jundal’s claims about how he was brought to India were true, it would not affect the legality of his detention and trial.
On the other side, Jundal’s defence lawyer Wahab Khan opposed the government’s petitions. He argued that the trial court’s 2018 order was only an interim or interlocutory order, which, according to him, could not be challenged before the High Court.
He also said that since the central authorities were not direct parties to the trial, their petitions challenging the order were not maintainable.
Now that the High Court has set aside the 2018 trial court order, the special court handling the 26/11 case is expected to resume the proceedings soon.
This will mark the second phase of the 26/11 Mumbai terror trial. In the first phase, Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab — the only attacker captured alive by Mumbai Police — was convicted and later executed. Two Indian suspects in that case were acquitted.
Abu Jundal, a resident of Beed in Maharashtra, is alleged to have played a major role in training and guiding the Pakistani terrorists during the 2008 Mumbai siege. He is believed to have helped the attackers communicate in Hindi during the attacks.
Jundal has already been convicted once before, in 2016, in the Aurangabad arms haul case. A special trial court had found him and 11 others guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
With the Bombay High Court’s latest order removing the procedural obstacles, the 26/11 conspiracy case is expected to move forward again in the coming weeks.
The order, which said,
“All petitions are allowed and the impugned order is quashed,”
has cleared the decks for one of India’s most high-profile terror trials to finally resume.
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