New Delhi: Rohini Salian, former special public prosecutor of the 2008 Malegaon blast case, who had in 2015 alleged that the government, through the National Investigation Agency (NIA), had urged her to go “soft” on the accused, has now pointed to serious lapses in how the case was handled.The former chief public prosecutor of Maharashtra has alleged that the outcome of the case was a “collective failure” of the people, owing to legal/procedural inconsistencies and behind-the-scenes pressure “over time”.“It was known that this would happen,” she alleged, speaking to The Indian Express. “What else is expected if you don’t lay out the true evidence? I was not the prosecutor who presented the evidence to the court finally. I was out since 2017, and before that, I had presented plenty of evidence and the Supreme Court had upheld it all. Where did it all vanish?”“I am not even disappointed with the verdict because this has become routine for me. We lose our sensitivity when this keeps happening. Nobody wants the truth to come out. We work very hard, but someone doesn’t want us to. Whose failure is this finally? Our own – the people’s,” she said, adding that the government cannot be blamed because it is also elected by the people.Speaking to Mid-day, Salian further alleged that what began as a solid investigation by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) gradually fell apart, not because of weak evidence but due to an alleged collapse of institutional and political integrity. She elaborated by highlighting that the ATS had filed its charge sheet in the case within 90 days, meeting the legal deadline to avoid bail for the accused. Witness statements and confessions were recorded under Section 164 of the CrPC, instead of recording before a magistrate.However, when the case was transferred to the NIA in 2011, the agency chose to reinvestigate rather than proceed with the already-filed charge sheet. According to the agency, the earlier evidence was false. This, she alleged, caused delay and resulted in inconsistencies. Interestingly, Salian had vetted the ATS charge sheet.Allegations of political interferenceSalian has alleged several times since 2015 that ever since the government changed at the centre (BJP-led NDA came to power in 2014) and the state (Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government), she was pressured to “go slow” on the accused. As a public prosecutor, her role was to represent the state impartially and asking her to “go slow” without any judicial order violates Article 21 (right to fair trial) and Article 14 (equality before law) of the constitution, she told Mid-day. “The Supreme Court has warned in multiple judgments, such as Sheonandan Paswan v State of Bihar, 1987, against undue influence over prosecutorial discretion,” Salian noted. Speaking to Express in 2015, she had claimed that she had got a call from one of the officers of the NIA asking to come over to speak with her. “He didn’t want to talk over the phone. He came and said to me that there is a message that I should go soft,” Salian had alleged. She had also alleged that earlier that month, before a regular hearing in the case in the sessions court, she was told that “higher-ups” did not want her to appear in the court for Maharashtra and that another advocate would attend the proceedings. It was after this that Salian was de-notified by the NIA from its panel of lawyers. “Last I knew, the matter was pending at the Supreme Court. I am not sure of my denotification status today,” she told the daily.Speaking to Mid-day, she said, “When law enforcement works with ulterior motives to please people in power, derailment of justice is no surprise.”Raising concerns about institutional accountability, she added that according to her, this was not merely a procedural lapse but a constitutional failure.“It is a call to democratic conscience, accountability is not only judicial, but the public at large – we, the people – and the Malegaon judgment is the collective failure of the people, to get justice to the victims of crime and terror,” she said.