Mumbai: The NIA has informed a Mumbai court that the charge-sheet filed against them in the Antilia bomb scare-Mansukh Hiren murder case cannot be given to the accused due to the “huge cost and time required for all the evidence”. The NIA made the submission through an application in the special court of the Mumbai Sessions Court that it will cost the NIA as much as Rs 40 lakh to provide a copy of the charge sheet.
The NIA said that this cost is not affordable for the agency. Moreover, the NIA has claimed that it will take 258 days i.e. 8 months or more to make these copies available to the accused. The evidence includes a large amount of digital evidence, including footage captured by CCTV cameras in Mumbai and Thane. The NIA also claimed to have phone records and millions of copies of their conversations.
Ten accused have been arrested in the case and booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). The probe agency had filed a charge sheet against suspended police officer Sachin Vaze, encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma and ten others in the special court after an explosives-laden vehicle was found parked near industrialist Mukesh Ambani's south Mumbai residence 'Antilia' on February 25.
Mansukh Hiran, a Thane-based businessman who had claimed to be the owner of that vehicle, was found dead in a creek in Thane on March 5. Two hundred witnesses are listed in the charge sheets and statements of 164 witnesses have been recorded in the Magistrate's Court. Along with Waze, Naresh Gor, Vinayak Shinde, Riaz Kazi, Sunil Mane, Santosh Shelar, Anand Jadhav, Satish Motkari, Manish Soni, and Pradeep Sharma are among the accused.
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