An important aspect of the Malegaon blasts, overlooked by the mainstream media when the National Investigative Agency (NIA) filed a chargesheet last month, is that there were two separate blasts, one in 2006 and another in 2008, and that there seems to be a deliberate attempt to compact the two into a single conspiracy.
At the time of the 2006 blast, there was no talk of ‘Hindu terror’. That theory was invented much later and applied to the 2008 blast after public protests against the arrests of members of one community for all terrorist incidents in the country. So after the arrest of some Hindus from certain Hindu organisations for the 2008 blasts, efforts began to implicate these Hindus in the 2006 attack as well.
Hence, stories appeared in the media about the NIA’s ‘failure’ to mention Swami Aseemanand, Sadhvi Pragya, and others, in the chargesheet filed on May 22, 2013, regarding the 2006 blast. There were helpful hints that a supplementary chargesheet could be filed later.
Swami Aseemanand allegedly exposed the involvement of Hindus in the crime, but retracted his confession in court, saying it was extracted under duress. NIA admits it has so far not found any credible evidence linking him or others to the conspiracy behind the attack of September 8, 2006, and hence avoided reference to Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, who are accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts.
Yet, a gigantic fishing expedition seems underway and it is doubtful if the truth of either attack will now be known. What is apparent is that there is an effort to prove that both blasts are the product of a single conspiracy and that the conspirators are the same. This effort was then extended to cover a series of terror crimes, as we shall see.
Malegaon 2006
On September 8, 2006, a series of bomb blasts occurred in Malegaon, a textile town in Nashik district, Maharashtra, causing the death of 37 and injuring 125, after Friday namaaz. Most victims were Muslim pilgrims; police reports said “two bombs attached to bicycles” exploded and resulted in a stampede.
Two days later (September 10), police reportedly identified the owner of one of the bicycles and released sketches of two suspects. On October 30, SIMI activist Noor-Ul-Hooda was arrested. The then DGP PS Pasricha said two other suspects were Shabeer Batterywala (of Lashkar e Toiba) and Raees Ahmad (of SIMI).
Previously, in May 2006, police recovered a cache of RDX explosives and automatic rifles from the region on information provided by arrested SIMI members. The September blasts contained “a cocktail of RDX, ammonium nitrate and fuel oil — the same mixture used in the July 11, 2006 Mumbai train bombings, in which several Islamist groups were suspects.
On November 28, 2006, Mumbai police stated that two Pakistani nationals were involved in the explosions, and that a hunt was on for eight more suspects. The ATS had already arrested eight suspects, including two booked in the July 11 Mumbai train blasts.
Later, three accused persons confessed before a competent authority about involvement in a conspiracy; but later two retracted before the magistrate, saying the disclosures were not voluntary. On November 16, 2011, seven accused in the Malegaon blasts were released on bail.
After NIA took charge of the investigations, it put out the following version: Swami Aseemanand, head of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Dangs, Gujarat, and Sadhvi Pragya were part of a conspiracy hatched in June 2006 at Valsad, Gujarat, for Hindu terror strikes. Aseemanand allegedly propounded his “bomb for a bomb” theory before members of a group called Abhinav Bharat (not the registered charity), and chose Malegaon as a target. This meeting was attended by RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi (murdered in 2007), Ramchandra Kalsangra, Sandeep Dange, Lokesh Sharma and Amit Hakla.
NIA’s chargesheet named Lokesh Sharma and three others named as accused and Kalsangra, Dange and Hakla as absconding accused.
The linking of Hindus to the 2006 blast paved the way for nine Muslim youths charged by the Maharashtra ATS (seven out on bail), to move court for discharge in the case. Two accused are still in jail as they are accused in the July 11 Mumbai local train blasts as well.
Malegaon 2008
On September 29, 2008, two bombs exploded in near a hotel at Bhikku Chowk in Malegaon, killing seven persons. The low intensity bombs were allegedly fitted onto a motorcycle. The Maharashtra ATS said the bombs were crude devices, identical to those that had detonated in Delhi three days previously.
Now for the first time allegations surfaced about the involvement of Hindu groups. Three persons were arrested – Sadhvi Pragya, Kalsangra and Shyam Bhawarlal Sahu. The ATS claim rested on the fact that the motorcycle used in the blast belonged to Sadhvi Pragya. She claimed to have sold the bike before becoming a sadhvi.
Later, Sameer Kulkarni (alleged mastermind) from Bhopal and Sangram Singh from Indore were held for questioning, along with Major (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay. Then, a serving lieutenant colonel, Prasad Shrikant Purohit, was interrogated and arrested (November 4).
The waters were muddied when on October 31, ATS sources said that Kulkarni had revealed a Bangladeshi link to the terror strike, and that 15 to 20 Bangladeshi nationals were part of Abhinav Bharat and had attended the meetings were the plot was hatched, in order to avenge the Ahmedabad blasts in July 2008. Kulkarni had reportedly launched a new organisation called Abhinav Bharat Sansthan.
The Bangladeshi angle has since disappeared. There was also some talk of the net spreading to embrace BJP Gorakhpur MP, Mahant Adityanath, but that strand of investigation also fizzled out.
But attempts were made to link Purohit and Pragya with the Samjhauta Express bombings. Lt Col Purohit worked for Military Intelligence and had reportedly collected sensitive information relating to SIMI and ISI operations in India, some of which had the potential to seriously embarrass some political leaders.
On November 14, 2008, the ATS arrested Varanasi-native Dayanand Pandey, alias Sudhakar Dwivedi, head of the Sharda Sarvagya Peeth. His role in the blasts remains unclear to this day, but he is languishing in jail.
The Malegaon blast occurred below the defunct first floor office of SIMI. Police claimed that the vehicle was an LML Freedom model and some of its parts had been cannibalised from other vehicles; the chassis and engine numbers had been erased. But dealer records and forensic experts managed to establish that the owner was a man with an ‘ABVP background’.
On January 19, 2009, the ATS filed a chargesheet naming Lt Col Prasad Purohit as the main conspirator for providing explosives and Pragya Thakur for arranging the persons who planted them. Stories now circulated that RDX was used in the 2008 blasts; Purohit had provided the RDX and had even thrown 60 kgs of the explosive into a river to get rid of the contraband, etc; the Army stoutly denied that any RDX was missing from its Ordnance stores! The original report on the 2008 Malegaon blast had said crude bombs were involved.
Twists and Turns
The 2006 Malegaon blasts case in which 13 SIMI activists were arrested, was handed over to the CBI after Malegaon residents agitated against the arrests. Later, the case was handed over to the NIA which came into existence in 2009 following the November 26, 2008, Mumbai terror attack. This changed the narrative completely.
In December 2012, NIA arrested one Mohan on charges of planting the explosives, after one Rajesh Chowdhry, who allegedly planted the bombs on the Samjhauta Express, claimed to be part of the Malegaon blast conspiracy.
The NIA charge-sheeted Lokesh Sharma (ex-RSS), Dhan Singh, Rajendra Chaudhary and Manohar Narwaria; it declared Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra as absconding. Key accused Sunil Joshi (RSS) was murdered in December 2007, allegedly by his own associates following some differences. In December 2012 itself, one Manohar Lodhi was arrested in connection with the 2006 Malegaon blast.
In another twist, Swami Aseemanand, arrested for his alleged role in Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid blast (2007), allegedly confessed before a magistrate that the Malegaon blast was masterminded by a Hindu group and that late Sunil Joshi and others were behind the 2006 blasts. He later retracted this statement.
By now the two Malegaon blast cases were being jumbled up, and the accused implicated in the Ajmer dargah blast, Samjhauta train blast, and Mecca Masjid.
It bears stating that Aseemanand’s original statement was never a confession as he did not admit to his own role in the blast(s). The statement is merely an accusation against other persons, for which no corroborative evidence was provided, or found subsequently by the investigators.
In April 2011, the NIA was given charge of the 2008 Malegaon blast investigation in which 12 persons had been arrested till then. In June 2012, accused Lokesh Sharma received bail from a special MCOCA court after the NIA failed to file the chargesheet within the stipulated 90-day period. Previously, Shamlal Sahu and Shivnarayan Kalsangra also got bail in the Malegaon case.
As of now, neither case has made any credible headway.
NitiCentral.com, 22 June 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/06/22/nia-making-a-mess-of-malegaon-investigation-93930.html
