Close to a year after his retirement from subordinate judicial service, former sessions judge Ambalal R Patel has been appointed Gujarat’s director of prosecution. Patel presided over the 2008 serial blasts case and delivered the verdict when he was posted in Ahmedabad’s city sessions court, wherein he sentenced 38 people to death and 11 others to life imprisonment in his order delivered in February 2022.
Thirty-eight is the highest number of people ever ordered to be hanged in a case in the history of independent India. The appeals by the convicts and applications by the state government to get their death penalty confirmed are pending in the Gujarat high court.
According to Section 366 of the CrPC, a death sentence is not executed unless it is confirmed by a high court in case the sentence is awarded by a sessions court. At the same time, the high court cannot confirm the sentence or acquit the persons before the time allowed to prefer an appeal has expired, or the appeal is disposed of, according to Section 368 of the CrPC.
Patel also briefly presided over the criminal prosecution initiated against social activist Teesta Setalvad, former DGP RB Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who have been charged with hatching a conspiracy to frame PM Narendra Modi and others in the post-Godhra communal violence in 2002. On the day of his retirement, the Bar association at the city civil court bade him farewell by playing music on the court premises, which was quite unusual.
