In the age of reels, it is flabbergasting to know that it took 17 years for truth to extricate itself from the suffocating grip of political machinations and shoddy investigations. On July 31, 2025, a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Mumbai delivered a resounding verdict, acquitting all seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case: Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Lt. Col. Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Major (Retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi, Ajay Rahirkar, and Sameer Kulkarni. These 7 hapless people, vilified as terrorists, endured nearly two decades of torment, their lives upended by a narrative that was as malicious as it was baseless. The court’s ruling was not just a legal exoneration; it was a scathing rebuke of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime’s reckless and politically motivated pursuit of the so-called “Hindu terror" narrative.

The 2008 Malegaon blast, which took 6 lives and injured over 100, was a tragedy that necessitated meticulous investigation and accountability. Instead, it became a political weapon bandied by the UPA to crush the looming Hindu renaissance, tarnish the image of Hindu organizations, and counter the rising tide of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), under the late Hemant Karkare, took no scourge in pointing fingers at Hindu nationalist groups, coining terms like “Bhagwa Atankwad" (Saffron Terror) and “Hindu terrorism." From P. Chidambaram to Prithviraj Chauhan to Digvijaya Singh, Congress stalwarts tripped over themselves to peddle this narrative, painting the Hindu community as perpetrators of terror without a shred of credible evidence.

The NIA court’s verdict is unequivocal: there was “no reliable and cogent evidence" to sustain these charges, with forensic reports deemed inconclusive and witness statements riddled........

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