Mumbai, June 11: Mumbai police’s credibility to put up water-tight legal cases took a beating today when a special anti-terror court acquitted all the eight persons charged in the Ghatkopar bus blast.

The blast on December 2, 2002, was the first in a series that rocked Mumbai that year and the next. Two persons were killed and 49 injured.

Last year, the same court had discharged nine accused, including former Tada detainee Saquib Nachen, due to lack of clinching evidence. In total, 18 had been arrested.

One of the accused, Khwaja Yunus, a software engineer from Ahmednagar, died in police custody, leading to the arrest of five police officers.

After hearing 148 witnesses, the judge of the designated anti-terror law court, A.P. Bhangale, pronounced the judgment this morning.

The prosecution is likely to challenge the decision in Bombay High Court within the stipulated period.

Those acquitted are 29-year-old JJ Hospital forensic medicine expert Abdul Mateen; Shaikh Mohammed Muzzamil, 28; Imran Rehman Khan, 33; Mohammed Altaf, 28; Arif Hussain alias Arif Paanwala, 32; Toufique Hamid, 27; Haroon Rashid, 33; and Rashid Ansari, 37.

Bhangale ruled that the prosecution failed to prove the specific charges against them.

“We are happy that justice has been done,” said Pervez Memon, one of the four defence lawyers.

The Mumbai police chargesheet had stated that the accused had participated in a conspiracy hatched between March and December 2002 after the Sabarmati Express fire, which sparked riots in Gujarat. The police said Lashkar-e-Toiba operative Abu Hamza had funded and planned the blast from Dubai as revenge against the Gujarat carnage along with the banned outfit, Students’ Islamic Movement of India.

During the trial, 11 prosecution witnesses turned hostile, including a conductor of BEST bus no 416. The JJ Hospital staff could not corroborate the police version that they had seen some of the accused at Mateen’s quarters.

The blast was followed by a series of explosions, first on a train in Mulund, then at Vile Parle, the Mumbai Central station and last, the twin explosions near the Gateway of India and in Zaveri Bazaar.