The reasoning behind the ruling by Special Judge Y D Shinde is expected to be available on Saturday.

The judge stayed his order for four weeks to allow the prosecution to appeal in the High Court. If the ruling is upheld by the Bombay High Court, the high-profile case will be tried in a regular court in Nashik and not the special MCOCA court in Mumbai.

While the ATS and the prosecution said they would appeal, lawyers defending the Hindu activists hailed the ruling and said it showed that MCOCA had been applied in the case only to use confessions of the accused during the trial as the state had hardly any evidence to back its case.

Purohit's lawyer Shrikant Shivde had challenged the application of MCOCA in the case saying the ATS investigation had not established that the accused were operating as part of a syndicate as required by MCOCA. They were also not alleged to have gained financially.

MCOCA can be applied in a case only if at least one of the accused has two prior cases that have been chargesheeted within the past decade. Further, each offence must be punishable with a minimum sentence of three years or more.

The tough law allows the prosecution to use as evidence confession recorded by a senior police officer which is ratified in court within 24 hours while under the Indian Penal Code a confession can only be recorded before a metropolitan magistrate. Besides, MCOCA also allows the prosecution to use telephone intercepts as evidence.

The ATS had applied MCOCA in the September 29 bomb blast case — in which six Muslims were killed — after one of the accused, Rakesh Dhavde, an antique arms trader from Pune, was found to be linked to three other criminal cases as well. While Dhavde had been chargesheeted in one of the three cases, which related to a blast in Purna, before he was picked up for the Malegaon blasts, he was charged for the two other older cases after he was picked up for Malegaon. This allowed the ATS to impose MCOCA on him and — by extension — on the others accused in the case.

However, Shivde argued against this saying the cases against Dhavde did not meet the criteria for MCOCA as he was chargesheeted in the second and third case only after being picked up for the Malegaon blast. His case got a boost last week when Dhavde was discharged in the Purna case for want of evidence.

"On the basis of one accused Rakesh Dhavde and chargesheets against him, the ATS can't pull in others. They have nowhere been able to produce independent evidence against the accused besides the confessions extracted," said Shivde. "We have maintained from the beginning that MCOCA was invoked just to extract confessions. The police resort to such moves when they have no evidence against the accused."

Special Public Prosecutor Rohini Salian said Friday's order had not deterred the state. "We have enough evidence to challenge the order. With 11 accused tried in the case, we have provided all the evidence in the chargesheet to establish how this was a large nexus and a syndicate was operating under the disguise of an organisation 'Abhinav Bharat'. Enough telephonic conversations and forensic reports are furnished to support our stand," she said.