Jaipur blasts: Rajasthan HC refuses to stay life sentence of two terror convicts in live bomb case
Bench rejects bail pleas of Mohammad Sarwar Azmi and Shahbaz Ahmed; both will remain in jail
Last Updated:
Security stepped up as court pronounces judgement in Jaipur serial bomb blast case.
Jaipur: The Rajasthan High Court has refused to grant interim relief to two convicts in the 2008 Jaipur serial bomb blasts case, dismissing their applications to stay the life sentence imposed on them in connection with the unexploded ninth bomb recovered from Chandpole Bazaar.
A bench of Justice Indrajit Singh and Justice Bhuvan Goyal turned down the stay pleas filed by Mohammad Sarwar Azmi and Shahbaz Ahmed, leaving them to continue serving their sentence in prison while their appeal is pending.
The two were among four men convicted on April 4, 2025 by the special court trying the Jaipur bomb blasts, which sentenced Saifurrahman, Mohammad Saif, Sarwar Azmi and Shahbaz Ahmed to life imprisonment in the case relating to the live bomb that was defused near a guest house in Chandpole Bazaar.
Counsel for the two convicts argued before the High Court that the trial court had earlier handed them the death sentence in eight other blast cases, but those convictions were set aside by the High Court, which acquitted them. The same evidence and facts, the defence contended, had been placed before the trial court in the live bomb case, and they should not have been convicted on identical material. They added that the men had already spent a long period in jail and the appeal was likely to take considerable time, and sought bail on that ground.
Opposing the plea, Additional Advocate General Rajesh Choudhary, along with advocates Aman Agarwal and Neha Goyal, told the bench that the principal object of the accused was to spread terror, and that they had taken responsibility for the blasts in emails sent to two news channels. The state submitted that additional evidence, including the recovery of those emails, had been led in the live bomb case, on the strength of which the trial court had imposed life imprisonment.
The serial bomb blasts of May 13, 2008 killed 71 people and injured 185, with eight bombs going off across Jaipur. A ninth device, planted near a guest house at Chandpole Bazaar, was defused fifteen minutes before it was set to detonate, and forms the subject matter of the present case.
