The Bombay High Court will commence hearing from tomorrow on a petition filed by Maharashtra government seeking confirmation of the death penalty given to Himayat Baig, the lone convict in the 2010 German Bakery blast in Pune.
A sessions court in Pune had in April 2013 convicted and sentenced Baig to death for carrying out the blast at the famous German Bakery in Pune’s upmarket Koregaon Park in February 2010, in which 17 people were killed and and 58 injured, including foreign nationals.
While the death confirmation petition was filed by Maharashtra government in the High Court, Baig also filed an appeal challenging his conviction and claiming that he has been implicated by the prosecution.
A division bench of Justices N H Patil and S B Shukre said they will start hearing the petitions tomorrow. The court directed police authorities to produce Baig before it tomorrow. Baig is now lodged in a Nagpur prison.
After the petitions were filed in the High Court, former journalist Ashish Khetan filed a Public Interest Litigation against the conviction.
He claimed that the “ATS deliberately created bogus evidence, extracted false confessions by the most inhuman torture, planted explosives in the houses of the accused and thus implicated an innocent Muslim youth.
