By Inderjit Badhwar
In the lexicon of criminal justice, few phrases are as chilling as “wrongful conviction”. When it happens, it doesn’t merely signal a failure—it exposes a fault line running through the legal, investigative and prosecutorial arms of the state. Our cover story this week, “Justice Derailment,” is a forensic deep-dive into one such seismic fault line.
The 2006 Mumbai train bombings were among the deadliest terror attacks in India’s modern history—killing 187 commuters and leaving a city in panic and mourning. In the years that followed, 13 men were convicted in what was touted as a prosecutorial triumph. Five were sentenced to death. Eight to life imprisonment. Closure seemed within reach.
Until last week, when the Bombay High Court delivered a scathing judgment acquitting all 13. What emerged in its pages wasn’t a mere legal technicality—it was a devastating indictment of how our justice system can be twisted by torture, manipulated evidence, coerced confessions, and a prosecutorial tunnel vision that privileges conviction over truth.
Now, the Supreme Court has stayed that acquittal, reanimating a case fraught with emotional and legal complexity. Our cover story by Sanjay Raman Sinha isn’t just an account of that legal pivot; it’s a powerful chronicle of what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what that says about the broader Indian legal system.
The details are uncomfortable. Prolonged custodial torture. Confessions copy-pasted across accused statements. Injuries ignored by doctors under police pressure. Crucial evidence fabricated or mishandled. And a prosecutorial strategy that placed blind faith in coerced words rather than verifiable facts.
This story is more than a courtroom drama—it is a moral reckoning. It challenges us to question how we treat the accused, particularly when the accused are poor, voiceless, or from minority communities. It forces us to look into the mirror of our institutions and ask: Are we really delivering justice? Or merely the illusion of it?
In the broader arc of public memory, terror cases often become black-and-white binaries—guilt and innocence, patriot and traitor, justice and vengeance. But real justice demands something more difficult: nuance, integrity, and a willingness to correct course when the system errs.
This issue also features a sobering box story on nine other high-profile cases where prosecutions faltered due to flawed investigations or deliberate sabotage. These are not isolated failures—they are symptoms of a deeper malaise.
The need for urgent reform is clear. From mandating video-recorded confessions to enforcing witness protection and ensuring timely legal access for detainees, the roadmap exists. What remains is the will to follow it.
As we publish this story, we are reminded that the battle for justice is often not fought in the dramatic instant of a verdict—but in the slow, often painful undoing of injustice.
Let this be a moment of collective reflection.
Let this not be just another case.