Mumbai: A former intelligence officer who had worked with the accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case Col. Prasad Purohit, was on Saturday declared hostile after he denied that his statement was recorded by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). He is the 29th witness among 282 prosecution witnesses that had testified, to be declared so. 

In his earlier statement, he had said he knows Purohit as the latter was deputed as an intelligence officer in the Nashik unit. He said he had worked with Purohit for a month when he too was deputed to the same unit. He had also named a co-accused of Purohit - Sudhakar Chaturvedi – and said that when Purohit was working as an intelligence officer, Chaturvedi would often come to visit him and hence he knew him. The witness told the court that he had left the army due to personal reasons.

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