MUMBAI: A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Wednesday rejected suspended police officer Sachin Waze’s application seeking discharge in the 2021 Antilia bomb scare cum murder case, holding that the prosecution had placed “more than sufficient material” on record to frame charges against him and proceed to trial.
Event Context
Waze’s 157-page discharge application pleaded “everything under the Sun”; “with a few lines more… (it) would have defeated Britannica Encyclopedia”, special judge Chakor S Baviskar said in a strongly-worded order. Waze’s discharge plea ultimately lacked merit, the judge said. At the discharge stage, the court was only required to determine whether the material disclosed a prima facie case, not whether it was sufficient to secure conviction.
“This is not the stage at which truth, veracity and effect of prosecution evidence is to be judged meticulously,” the judge observed; the prosecution’s material had to be accepted as true while deciding if charges should be framed, he said.
After examining the charge-sheet, witness statements, CCTV footage, electronic evidence including call detail records and tower location data, and forensic material, the court concluded that there was “more than sufficient material” to frame charges against Waze. The court agreed with the NIA’s contention that his discharge application was not maintainable, as he had substantially sought similar relief through an application before the trial court, which was rejected in October 2025. Waze’s writ petitions before the Bombay and Delhi high courts had also been dismissed, the court said.
The court noted that the present application was filed only after the prosecution concluded its opening arguments, without explanation for the delay. It was “an apt but unwanted example on the part of applicant/ accused No.1 (Sachin Waze) of prolonging this trial,” the court said; the issues raised by the officer were to be tested at trial, not at the discharge stage, it added.
Team Analysis
The case against Waze arises from three interlinked first information reports (FIRs) registered in February-March 2021. The first FIR, triggered by Thane-based auto parts dealer Mansukh Hiran’s complaint about his Mahindra Scorpio being stolen, was registered on February 18. On February 25, the same vehicle was found parked outside Mukesh Ambani’s residence, Antilia, with 20 gelatin sticks and a threat letter, triggering a second FIR. Hiran went missing on March 4 after allegedly leaving home to meet a police officer; his body was recovered from a creek in Thane the next morning. The third FIR was registered on March 7 after his wife, Vimala Hiran, complained to the Anti-Terrorism Squad regarding alleged foul play leading to his death. The central government then transferred all three cases to the NIA.
The NIA arrested Waze in March 2021. He was subsequently suspended from the police force and remains in judicial custody at Taloja.
The order also underscored the scale of the prosecution case. The NIA’s charge-sheet ran into more than 14,000 pages, with 10 named accused and statements of more than 300 witnesses. Waze’s discharge plea itself ran into 157 pages, and the agency’s reply 145 pages, while the defence relied on 93 judicial precedents spanning more than 2,000 pages.
The NIA told the court that statements of industrialist Mukesh Ambani and his wife Nita Ambani had not yet been recorded, and that it reserved the right to examine them during trial.
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According to the prosecution, Waze sought to re-establish himself as a “super cop” while pursuing monetary gain, allegedly on the directions of a “high rank political figure” to collect ₹100 crore every month from hotels and bars in Mumbai. The police officer allegedly hatched a conspiracy to terrorise the Ambanis by planting explosives in Hiran’s stolen vehicle, and to eliminate Hiran when the latter refused to take responsibility for the stolen vehicle.
Waze has denied all the allegations. He argued there was no DNA, fingerprint or other scientific evidence linking him to the offences, that the UAPA had been wrongly invoked, that the court lacked jurisdiction, and that the investigation was riddled with procedural lapses. He also contended the gelatin sticks recovered from the vehicle did not by themselves show any intention to strike terror.
