Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, one of the seven persons acquitted in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts case last week, was on Sunday given a grand welcome by family members and supporters when he returned home in Pune.

At the Shantisheela Housing Society on the city’s Law College Road, Purohit was welcomed with a procession, in which traditional drums were beaten and flower petals were showered on him, PTI reported. Bharatiya Janata Party member and Rajya Sabha MP Medha Kulkarni was among those who attended the event.

Those who participated in the procession shouted “Jai Shree Ram” and “Sanatan Dharm Ki Jai” to celebrate Purohit’s acquittal.

Six persons were killed and around 100 were injured when an explosive device strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon in northern Maharashtra on September 29, 2008.

However, the special National Investigation Agency court that acquitted the persons accused in the Malegaon blast case on July 31 remarked in its verdict that although the prosecution could not prove its charges against Purohit, it could not be said that the allegations against him were “baseless or without foundation”, Live Law reported.

Special Judge AK Lahoti did not accept the contention that he had been collecting information from Hindutva organisations like Abhinav Bharat as part of his duties as a member of the military intelligence.

The court also said that Purohit was one of the founding members of Abhinav Bharat and was an active member of it, Live Law reported.

Apart from Purohit, the others who were acquitted in the case were Pragya Singh Thakur, Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi and Sudhakar Chaturvedi. Thakur went on to become a BJP MP from Bhopal between 2019 and 2024.

Purohit was on bail in the case since August 2017 after having spent nearly nine years in jail. He has been posted at an Army formation in Mumbai since he got bail, according to The Indian Express. He visited his Pune home for the first time on Sunday after his acquittal on July 31.

At the event on Sunday, Purohit said that not even an enemy could question his “loyalty towards the nation”, the Hindustan Times reported.

“During my submission [in court], I insisted that I be called anything but not aatankwadi [terrorist] or deshdrohi [traitor],” he said.

Alleged acts not part of official duty: NIA court

The lieutenant colonel had argued before the court that he was falsely implicated in the case, and that he had been working as an intelligence officer seeking to monitor extremist groups.

However, the NIA court held that there was no evidence to show that Purohit’s superior authority had given him permission to join the Abhinav Bharat trust or to collect funds for it.

“As per the ethos of the military intelligence, the commanding officer or Discipline & Vigilance Branch used to protect the interest of officers and sources,” the judge noted, according to Live Law. “But after the arrest of Purohit, no any steps were taken to protect their officer. If he would have really discharged the duty under the colour of his office, there would have been protection to him.”

The court said that Purohit had only been allowed to “mix up” with certain organisations to collect information about them, but there was no evidence to show that he had been allowed to join any group.