Malegaon blast: Plea to drop UAPA dismissed

Mumbai: The

Bombay high court

on Monday dismissed petitions filed by 2008 Malegaon bl-ast accused Lt Col Shrikant Purohit and

Sameer Kulkarni

seeking dropping of charges under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) against them.

A division bench of Justices Naresh Patil and Nitin Sambre said it was not the appropriate stage to go into the issue and pointed out that the special NIA court was to decide on their applications seeking discharge from the case on December 21.

Advocate S Shivade, counsel for Purohit, had contended that the sanction to invoke UAPA in the case was granted in 2009, while the sanctioning authority was set up in 2010. The sanction in the case was not proper, said the advocate and urged HC to delete

UAPA charges

. Advocate Sandesh Patil, counsel for NIA, cited SC judgments which had ruled that issues relating to the legality of sanction could be gone into during trial. tnn