PANCHKULA: Four accused, including the radical right-wing’s Swami Aseemanand , were on Wednesday acquitted by the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Panchkula in the 2007 Samjhauta blasts case.The special NIA judge Jagdeep Singh pronounced the verdict after dismissing an application filed by a Pakistani woman, Rahila Vakil, who said she was the daughter of Muhammad Vakil, one of the Pakistanis killed in the Samjhauta blasts. She had urged court through her lawyer Momin Malik to record her statement and examine other Pakistani witnesses of the twin blasts.Sixty-eight people, mostly Pakistanis, on board the Samjhauta Express were killed when bombs set off in two bogies of the train going from Delhi to Attari, the last station on the Indian side, on February 18, 2007, at Diwana village, near Panipat in Haryana.The NIA will examine the court’s orders and accordingly decide on the next course of action. “The NIA had received the investigation of the case almost three years after the incident but still after several difficulties in investigations, the agency had unearthed the case. However, due to delay some of the witnesses turned hostile and we could not link the charges. We will examine the copy of the judgment and any decision on appeal will be taken after that,” NIA prosecutor R K Handa added.The court acquitted the former RSS activist Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajender Chaudhary in the case. When the special NIA judge pronounced the verdict, Aseemanand and three others were calm, revealed sources.Of the total eight accused in the case, Sandeep Dange, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Amit Chauhan are absconding. Another accused Sunil Joshi, allegedly the mastermind of the case, was shot dead at Dewas in Madhya Pradesh on December 29, 2007.Aseemanand and Kamal Chauhan now have no cases pending against them, but Lokesh Sharma and Rajender Chaudhary will remain in judicial custody in connection with the 2006 Malegaon blasts case. There were total three cases against Aseemanand, including 2007 Mecca Masjid blast, Ajmer Dargah blasts and Samjhauta blasts. On April 16, 2018, he was acquitted by special NIA court in Hyderabad in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case. Similarly, in March 2017, Aseemanand was acquitted in Ajmer Dargah blasts case.After the verdict, Aseemanand, who was out on bail, exited the court room and thanked people and media who were outside court complex with folded hands. However, he did not comment on his acquittal and left the premises in a private vehicle.Aseemanand’s counsel Mukesh Garg said the NIA court’s verdict had proved that his client and others had no links with these blasts.The NIA had filed the charge sheet, running into 1,500 pages against Aseemanand and four others in the Panchkula NIA court on June 20, 2011. In the charge sheet, the agency had accused Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Sunil Joshi (now dead), Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalasangra alias Ramji, of murder and criminal conspiracy, under the Explosive Substances Act and Railways Act and others. Later, supplementary charge sheet was also filed against the remaining accused.The NIA had submitted that the accused had attacked the train to take revenge against the terror attacks on Hindu temples — Akshardham (Gujarat), Raghunath Mandir (Jammu) and Sankat Mochan Mandir (Varanasi). However, the accused had pleaded they were falsely implicated in the case and their ‘confessional statements’ had been taken by the investigation agencies under duress by resorting to coercive methods.In this case, the court had directed 13 Pakistan nationals to record their statements, but they did not turn up. These Pakistani nationals were those who were either travelling on the train on that fateful day or are next of kin who died in the blasts.Read this report in Marathi