2008 Bengaluru blasts case: Second witness turns hostile

Bengaluru: The 2008 Bengaluru serial blasts case continues to haunt the state police as a prime witness against Abdul Nasir Madani turned hostile during the trial at the 49th Additional NIA Special Court on Tuesday.

The prime witness, Rafeeq, who hails from Kodagu, told the court that he was seeing Madani for the first time. He alleged that the Karnataka police had forced him to sign some documents, a few of which were in English, and made him the witness in the blasts case.

Rafeeq had given a statement earlier before a court that he had seen Madani in Kodagu, where the plot to carry out the serial blasts was hatched.

Rafeeq is the second witness to turn hostile after Jose Varghese in the case. Varghese had told the court that he learnt that the police had made him the witness without his knowledge by making him sign some documents that were in Kannada. Varghese told the court in August 2010 that he was compelled to believe that Madani has been falsely implicated in the blasts case.

Mr Madani, the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) chairman, is the prime accused in the 2008 Bengaluru serial blasts where eight explosions were triggered within a span of 30 minutes. The blasts killed a woman and injured 20 others on July 25, 2008.