HINDU TERROR -
Out Look - 19 JULY 2010
The Mirror Explodes
Hindu terror is a reality, yet India refuses to
utter its name
https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/the-mirror-explodes/266145
JITENDER GUPTA
Unfinished stories, goes an old idiom in Ajmer,
find their denouement in Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s shrine. Perhaps, unfinished
investigations do too. Two-and-a-half years after low-intensity blasts ripped
apart the courtyard of the centuries-old shrine, the Rajasthan police arrested
three men—Devendra Gupta, Vishnu Prasad and Chandrashekhar Patidar. Gupta, an
RSS worker, was suspected to have bought the mobile phone and SIM card that
triggered off the October 2007 blast in which three were killed. Till their
arrest on April 30 this year, the story narrated by the investigators, lapped
up by the establishment and reiterated in large sections of the media was that
the Ajmer blast was the handiwork of jehadi terrorists.
The SIM-mobile phone-detonated bombs are similar in
Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blasts, with RDX-TNT mix in proportion used by the
Indian army.
The one troubling question—would jehadis target
Muslim devout at a dargah?—can have complicated answers, as the body count at
Lahore’s Data Ganj Baksh would testify. But in India, the question wasn’t even
deemed worthy of being asked as a reasonable line of inquiry. The needle of
suspicion remained firmly and automatically fixed on Islamic terrorists—young
men from the community were detained at various stages of the investigation and
interrogated at length—until the trail finally led to Gupta and pointed to
radical Hindu nationalist groups instead. Says Rajasthan Anti-Terrorist Squad
chief Kapil Garg: “We have arrested some people of that religion (Hinduism) and
we’re dead sure we’re on the right track.”
May 18, 2007 Doom Friday Mecca
Masjid was rocked by a pipe bomb
In Hyderabad too, the CBI team believes it is on
the right track, finally, in the Mecca Masjid bomb blasts case. Four men
belonging to radical Hindu groups were arrested this May for triggering a
high-intensity bomb that went off in the masjid complex in May 2007, killing 14
and injuring some 50. At that time, the Hyderabad police had said it was most
likely the work of the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami (HuJI), backed by local
logistical support; some 26 Muslim men were picked up, interrogated, forced to
confess and detained for up to six months.
The terror trail in India changed after the
Maharashtra ATS’s investigations into the 2008 Malegaon blasts, which alerted
them to Abhinav Bharat.
The story followed this script till the CBI found
evidence to the contrary: the SIM card-and-mobile phone-detonated explosives
packed in metal tubes were strikingly similar to the Ajmer blasts contraption.
Tellingly, both bombs are believed to have contained a deadly mix of RDX and
TNT, in proportions often used by the Indian army. CBI director Ashwani Kumar
told the media that an activist named Sunil Joshi “played a key role in
orchestrating the Ajmer blast... and a set of mobile SIM cards that had been
used in activation of the bomb-triggers in the Mecca Masjid blast was used
again in the Ajmer blast”.
Around the same time, officers of the National
Investigating Agency (NIA) filed a chargesheet in a Panjim court accusing 11
people, all Hindus and members of the ultra-right-wing Sanathan Sanstha, of
masterminding and executing the October 2009 Margao blasts that killed the two
people ferrying the explosives to a local festival. Investigation in Pune’s
German Bakery blast this February has run aground after the initial suspicion,
detaining and interrogation of suspected Muslim men, some believed to be
members of “sleeper cells of jehadi groups” or the Indian Mujahideen (IM). When
Abdul Samad was arrested last month, the Maharashtra ATS actively encouraged
the understanding that he was the man caught on CCTV cameras in the bakery that
night. However, Samad was never charged with the blast and subsequently let off
in other cases too.
Malegaon Blasts II: September 29, 2008.
Deadly Bike The bomb here was mounted on a
Hero Honda (Reuters, From Outlook July 19, 2010 Issue)
Malegaon
Blasts-I
September 8, 2006
37 dead
September 8, 2006
37 dead
·
Initial arrests: Arrested
include Salman Farsi, Farooq Iqbal Makhdoomi, Raees Ahmed, Noorul Huda
Samsudoha and Shabbir Batterywala.
·
Later revelation: Suspicion
now rests on Hindu terrorists because of the 2008 blasts.
Samjhauta
Express Blasts
February 18, 2007
68 dead, mostly Pakistanis
February 18, 2007
68 dead, mostly Pakistanis
·
Initial suspicion: LeT
and JeM were blamed. Those arrested included Pakistani national Azmat Ali.
·
Later revelation: Police have seen the
evidence trail lead to right-wing Hindu activists. Investigators claim the
triggering mechanism for the Mecca masjid blast three months later was similar
to the one used here. Police are looking for RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Ramji.
Mecca
Masjid Blast
May 18, 2007
14 dead
May 18, 2007
14 dead
·
Initial arrests: Around 80 Muslims detained
for questioning and 25 arrested. Several have now been acquitted, including
Ibrahim Junaid, Shoaib Jagirdar, Imran Khan and Mohammed Adul Kaleem.
·
Later revelation: In June 2010 the CBI
announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh for information on the two accused,
Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra. Lokesh Sharma arrested.
Ajmer
Sharif Blast
October 11, 2007
3 dead
October 11, 2007
3 dead
·
Initial arrests: HuJI, LeT blamed. Those
arrested include Abdul Hafiz Shamim, Khushibur Rahman, Imran Ali.
·
Later revelation: In 2010, Rajasthan ATS
arrests Devendra Gupta, Chandrashekhar and Vishnu Prasad Patidar. Accused Sunil
Joshi, who was killed weeks before the blast, is believed to have been a key
planner.
Thane
Cinema Blast
June 4, 2008
June 4, 2008
·
Affiliated to Hindu Janjagruti Samiti and Sanathan
Sanstha, Ramesh Hanumant Gadkari and Mangesh Dinkar Nikam arrested. Blast
planned to oppose the screening of Jodhaa Akbar.
·
Kanpur
And Nanded Bomb Mishaps
August 2008
August 2008
·
Two members of Bajrang Dal—Rajiv Mishra and
Bhupinder Singh—were killed while assembling bombs in Kanpur. In April 2006, N.
Rajkondwar and H. Panse from the same outfit died under similar circumstances
in a bomb-making workshop in Nanded.
Malegaon
Blasts II
September 29, 2008
7 dead
September 29, 2008
7 dead
·
Initial suspicion: Groups
like Indian Mujahideen involved
·
Later revelation: Abhinav Bharat and
Rashtriya Jagaran Manch accused of involvement. Arrested include Pragya Singh
Thakur, Lt Col Srikant Purohit and Swami Amritanand Dev Tirth, also known as
Dayanand Pandey.
Goa
Blasts
October 16, 2009
October 16, 2009
·
2 dead Both accused are members of the Sanathan
Sanstha. Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik were riding a scooter laden with
explosives, which accidentally went off.
Terror trails in India dramatically changed with
the Malegaon blasts investigation in September-October 2008. Led by then
Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who was subsequently killed on the night
of 26/11, the investigation pointed to Abhinav Bharat (AB), an ultra-right-wing
Pune-based organisation established in 2005-06, and its members or affiliates.
What Karkare’s teams managed to uncover is part of recent history and should
have become the basis of examining and monitoring the new phenomenon of
Hindutva terror but didn’t.
“For a decade, stories of Hindu terror have been
trickling in. Instead of a systematic investigation, it’s been an
event-to-event probe so far.”
The Hindutva links to Mecca Masjid, Ajmer and other
low-intensity blasts have been in the public domain for close to two years; the
signs were visible since 2002-03 when an ied found at the Bhopal railway
station was traced back to local Hindutva activists Ramnarayan Kalsangra and
Sunil Joshi. They were questioned, but no evidence was found. Yet, it prompted
Congress leader Digvijay Singh to declare a Bajrang Dal hand. Later in 2006,
there were explosions in the houses of Hindutva activists in Nanded and Kanpur,
where ieds were being prepared. Through that year, mosques in several towns in
Maharashtra—Purna, Parbhani, Jalna—were rocked by low-intensity blasts; the
Nanded one was meant for a mosque in Aurangabad. Recovered with a map of
Aurangabad were false beards and Muslim male outfits. That should have been
warning enough.
However, till May-June this year, the establishment
did not either see these warning signals or chose to ignore them—except for a
brief two-month period in 2008 when Karkare led the Malegaon probe. Now, it may
be difficult to sustain the denial. “For the last 10 years, stories about Hindu
right-wing violence have been trickling out. Instead of a systematic
investigation, there has been an event-to-event investigation. The larger story
has remained underinvestigated and under-reported,” says Mumbai advocate and
human rights campaigner Mihir Desai. The CBI is only now seeking directions
from the Union home ministry to see the Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and other
blasts in conjunction after there has been no conclusive evidence of the
involvement of Islamic groups.
Purohit had provided a link between Malegaon and
Mecca Masjid blasts. But the police was chasing HuJI.
Malegaon 2008 provided the much-needed aperture to
review the role of Hindutva groups. In September that year, eight people were
killed and many injured in a low-intensity blast. The ATS investigation led to
Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, whose motorcycle was used to explode the bomb, and
then to 13 others, including self-styled guru Dayanand Pandey and Lt Col Prasad
Shrikant Purohit, the first-ever serving officer to be charged. During
interrogation, he had disclosed to ATS investigators that he had provided the
RDX in the Mecca Masjid blasts too but the ATS was reportedly asked not to make
it public as the Hyderabad police had detained HuJI suspects. The similarity
with the Ajmer Sharif blasts was evident too.
Malegaon I - September 8, 2006 two bombs
attached to cycles went off in a cemetery.
The 4,528-page chargesheet filed in the Malegaon
case offers insight into the grand design of the Abhinav Bharat and its
affiliates. Purohit, the Sadhvi and others had spoken to one another “to avenge
bomb attacks on Hindu shrines” and had engineered a series of blasts with the
larger ambition to establish a “separate Hindu rashtra”. Abhinav Bharat—whose
original avatar was started by Veer Savarkar, later disbanded, and restarted by
Himani Savarkar—was set up to achieve this ambition. “This organised crime
syndicate,” states the chargesheet, “wanted to adopt a national flag, that is,
a solo-themed saffron flag with a golden border...with an ancient golden
torch.”
The one crucial missing link, who has been named by
all accused in custody as “the man”, is Ramnarayan Kalsangra, an expert at
assembling bombs.
Malegaon honoured Karkare by naming a chowk after
him—the tribute of a relieved town to a man they believed would have led them
to the truth about the September 2006 blasts too. Three bombs had gone off that
Friday afternoon near a mosque and cemetery, killing 37 and injuring 100.
Typically, Muslim men alleged to be members of the proscribed SIMI were picked
up, interrogated and forced to confess. But the chargesheet had several
loopholes—main accused Mohammed Zahid, though a SIMI activist, was leading prayers
in a village 700 km from Malegaon that day; conspirator Shabbir Masiuallah had
been in police custody a month before the blasts, police sketches made on the
basis of eyewitness accounts showed clean-shaven men while all accused had kept
beards for years.
The Rajasthan ATS now believes that Devendra Gupta,
linked to the Ajmer blasts, was in touch with AB members through RSS pracharak
Sunil Joshi. Providing the other end of the link, the Maharashtra ATS says the
Sadhvi, enraged when Joshi was killed by suspected SIMI activists in September
2007, ordered the 2008 Malegaon blast. Joshi has also been linked to the
Samjhauta Express blasts which killed 68 people, all Pakistanis. The evidence
has come from Purohit’s reported phone conversation as narrated by an unnamed
witness.
Unholy deed A bomb in a schoolbag exploded during iftaar at the Ajmer Sharif
October 11, 2007
Yet, the story has several loose ends, most
critical among them being fugitives Ramnarayan Kalsangra, Swami Aseemanand and
others. Kalsangra, investigators in Maharashtra and Rajasthan say, was
introduced to Devendra Gupta by the Sadhvi and is believed to be an expert at
assembling bombs. Finding Kalsangra is crucial since all accused in custody
have named him as “the man”. Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon, Samjhauta Express
and several other blasts are clearly part of a larger story. Only when the CBI
puts all the pieces together will the entire Hindutva terror picture emerge, if
at all.
By Smruti Koppikar with Debarshi Dasgupta
and Snigdha Hasan
19 JULY 2010 NATIONAL SOCIETY
The
Bomber Among Us
The Hindu majority has a blind spot for terror
among its own
Hindus are docile, peace-loving, non-violent
people. India is a land of unity in diversity. This is, after all, the country
that produced Mahatma Gandhi. Terrorists are always Muslims. What of the
so-called Maoist terrorists? Oh, they are tribals and their leaders are
communists. They are not really Hindus!
These are the stereotypes we live with, blinding us
to an unfolding reality. That there is indeed a phenomenon that can only be
described as ‘Hindu terror’. For the people who display trishuls, shout shrill slogans
for Bharat Mata and believe in retributive justice against minorities are not
fringe lunatics with crazy ideas. Increasingly, investigations reveal that they
have actually taken to making bombs and planting them in places where Muslims would
be blamed. Why do they do this? Perhaps, in their distorted worldview, any
action that would mobilise the people against the minorities is justified.
Yet most of us believe that Hindu terror does not
exist because we do not see it. And what we don’t see, we don’t know and we
don’t believe. Hence the conspiracy of silence on the issue. Jyotirmaya Sharma,
author of books on Golwalkar and Hindutva, says this stems from the myth that
most Indians harbour about the peaceful, other-worldly Hindu. “If you
participate in the myth, you participate in the conspiracy,” he says. Indeed,
he argues that while we can separate mainstream Muslims from the extreme Wahabi
Islam promoted by organisations like the LeT, in the case of Hindu terrorists,
they are emerging from the wellspring of the Sangh parivar. “The BJP
parliamentarians and the terrorists are from the same tradition and that should
worry us deeply,” he says.
 “BJP parliamentarians and the
terrorists are from the same tradition ...and that should worry us
deeply.” Jyotirmaya Sharma, Author |
|
 “They get away with murderous
activities as they have sympathy among a section of the Hindu elite.” Dilip Simeon, Historian |
|||
 “Past records are bad
enough...the Indian state can’t afford any complacency against Hindu
terrorists.” Christophe Jaffrelot,
Historian |
|
 “Hindu chauvinism has grown in
the past 20 years...there are many who silently support such
attitudes.” Kumar Ketkar, Senior Journalist |
|||
|
|
 “What is objectionable is using
government machinery to give currency to the idea of Hindu terrorism.” Seshadri Chari, Ex-editor, Organiser |
|
|||
Historian Dilip Simeon digs out some data from the
past to argue “that to disregard the nature of the RSS would be to pull wool
over our eyes”. He quotes from the February 4, 1948, communique of the
government of India declaring the RSS unlawful because “its members have been
found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to
collect firearms and suborn the police and military. These activities have been
carried out under the cloak of secrecy...the cult of violence of the Sangh has
claimed many victims. The latest and most precious to fall was Gandhiji
himself”. Besides, Simeon asks, “Is Praveen Togadia’s yatra in Kandhamal that
resulted in 125 dead, thousands injured and rendered refugees any less a
terrorist act than that of the cadre involved in the Malegaon and Ajmer blasts?
They get away with their murderous activities because of sympathy among a
section of the elite.”
Crimson tide Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur
Why does mainstream discourse rationalise and
accept groups like the VHP, Shiv Sena and the RSS? At worst, they are
trivialised as a looney fringe. Senior Maharashtra-based journalist Kumar
Ketkar says this attitude comes from a middle class ambiguity. “Hindu
chauvinism surfaced over the last 20 years and there are many who silently
support it. And the classes who have such attitudes are in high-end professions
like media, academics, law and judiciary.” S.M. Mushrif, ex-IGP (Maharashtra)
and author of the book Who Killed Karkare?, calls it Brahminists’
propaganda. “The mainstream media, police, government are all victim to their
propaganda. I purposely don’t call them Hindus. At every stage in the
investigation of these cases of Hindu terror, there was interference by the IB
which has also been taken over by the Brahminists.”
Clearly, there are strong views on the issue.
Historian Christophe Jaffrelot says Hindu terror groups may not pose as big a
threat to India as Pakistan-sponsored Islamist organisations like the
Lashkar-e-Toiba but they still need to be dealt with seriously. He counts at
least three reasons for this. “First, they belong to a resilient tradition that
harks back to Savarkar and Godse for whom terrorist violence was a legitimate
modus operandi against Muslims and even the Mahatma. This school of thought has
always been on the fringe of the Hindu nationalist movement, but they re-emerge
in the context of crises like Partition and the post-9/11 series of Islamist
attacks in India. More importantly, the Sangh parivar tends to move in this
direction as is evident from the techniques of the Bajrang Dal and the
involvement of RSS members in the Ajmer blast and the Mecca Masjid attack
(Hyderabad). Second, even if organisations like Abhinav Bharat are microscopic,
they were started by serving or retired army officers, including Ramesh
Upadhyay and Lt Col Purohit. This development takes place after the BJP and VHP
have already attracted dozens of former armymen and senior policemen. While
India can congratulate itself on the apolitical role of its military personnel,
any infiltration of these institutions by communal ideas or elements is
alarming.”
Blast proof Major Upadhyay and Swami Amritanand Maharaj
Ironically, the BJP and RSS, alarmed by the
questioning and investigations of its cadre, now say that terrorism has no
religion. BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar told Outlook, “We believe
you cannot defame all Muslims just because some are terrorists. You don’t say
Muslim terrorists, so why say Hindu terrorists? We condemn your communal
approach to terrorism.” Seshadri Chari, member of the BJP’s national executive
and a former editor of RSS mouthpiece Organiser, says the police
has every right to investigate and question people. “What is objectionable is
using government machinery and planting news to give currency to the idea of
Hindu terrorism. The government is under pressure from some quarters to say
that terrorism is not peculiar to people of the Islamic faith.” In other words,
Hindus cannot be terrorists and if someone says they are, it can only be under
pressure from those who work for Islamic terrorists!
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh is one of
those who has consistently raised the issue of Hindu terrorism with the
government. He told Outlook: “I have been saying for a long time that
Hindu radicals and Muslim radicals are two faces of the same coin. Acts of
terrorism increased after the Babri Masjid demolition. This in turn led to the
radicalisation of a section of the Hindus. There is so much evidence of the
RSS/VHP combine operating via various militant organisations, so much proof
that they have given training in bomb-making. Unfortunately, the media mostly
goes with a one-sided story. Whenever there is a blast, the same day the media
comes out with names of Muslim boys.”
Blast proof Terror outfit Abhinav
Bharat’s Lt Col Shrikant Purohit
The media, after all, only reflects the stereotypes
and prejudices of society. Indeed, it thrives on sensational images of Muslim
terrorists. A mainstream English and many language channels have even admitted
that TRPs go up whenever they show visuals of Muslim terrorists and the
Taliban. Hindu terror, it seems, doesn’t have that kind of mainstream audience.
So we have a situation where Muslims are picked up
randomly, presumed guilty until proven innocent. In the case of so-called Hindu
terrorism, though, the reverse is always true. As Jaffrelot explains, “The
Indian state cannot afford to display any complacency vis-a-vis Hindu
terrorists as the past records are bad enough. Till recently,
policemen—sometimes contradicting themselves in the course of the investigations
itself—were quick to attribute any blast to Islamist groups...even when the
casualties were Muslims. If the guilty men of Abhinav Bharat and other groups
are not dealt with in the right way, the impression that is gaining momentum
among the minorities—that some Indian citizens are more equal than others
before the law—will have a devastating impact.”
That process has already begun. The irony is that
much of what Indian Muslims have been blamed for may well turn out to be the
act of a terrorist determined to communalise the situation and blame minorities
for wanton violence. We can only wonder who would benefit from such a vitiated
atmosphere.
19 JULY 2010NATIONALHINDU
TERROR
‘Purohit Was Supplying Firearms For Money’
Excerpts from the confession statement of the two
suspects arrested in the ’08 Malegaon blasts
https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/purohit-was-supplying-firearms-for-money/266146
Sudhakar Dwivedi, Abhinav Bharat
“A meeting was held at Deolali near Nashik in
August 2007. Lt Col Purohit, (Sudhakar) Chaturvedi and Maj (retd) Ramesh
Upadhyay were present. It was discussed that something should be done during
Urs in Panipat because the maximum number of cows are slaughtered there. Sadhvi
Pragya Singh Thakur demanded that Purohit ‘supply explosives’ so that the group
could do something against the killing of Hindus. Purohit promised to supply
explosives. Chaturvedi took the responsibility of ‘getting two bomb planters’.
“Purohit was
supplying firearms for money. One Ashok from Bhopal had got a weapon from him.
This Ashok (had) deposited the money in Purohit’s ICICI Bank account. Purohit
was also paid Rs 5 lakh for a ‘gun consignment’ in 2008 by a man. I had
convinced Purohit to procure bomb-making material as Purohit had not been
taking the sadhvi seriously.”
The statement also has Dwivedi spilling the beans
on detailed plans made to gun down RSS leader Indresh Kumar as Purohit and
others believed he was taking money from the ISI.
Dayanand Pandey, Abhinav Bharat
“In August 2008, I had gone to Pune where I met
with RSS leader Shyam Apte who told me about (Indresh) Kumar and (Mohan)
Bhagwat taking money from ISI. When Lt Col Srikant Purohit came to know this,
he asked one Dayanand Pandey, Abhinav Bharat
“In August 2008, I had gone to Pune where I met
with RSS leader Shyam Apte who told me about (Indresh) Kumar and (Mohan)
Bhagwat taking money from ISI. When Lt Col Srikant Purohit came to know this,
he asked one
Captain Joshi to murder the two. But Joshi was not
able to execute the task which infuriated Apte.”
The Malegaon blasts conspiracy was hatched by
Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya Singh who wanted to “take the lead in the cause of
Hindutva and avenge the deaths of Hindus by Muslims”. In August 2007, “I met
Purohit in Deolali camp where he told me about forming a right-wing group by
the name Abhinav Bharat for promoting and safeguarding Hindutva”.
In January 2008, “I attended a meeting of Abhinav
Bharat in Faridabad” where Purohit, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and retired Major
Ramesh Upadhyay were present. Here, Purohit spoke extensively about the
“setting up of a Hindu rashtra”. Purohit also said he would “arrange for
explosives which can be used to blast Muslim-dominated areas. Upadhyay then
said that he can arrange for men to prepare the bombs”.
In June 2008, Pandey met the Sadhvi in Indore, who
said that Purohit was not taking the cause seriously and asked him “to convince
Purohit to arrange for the explosives immediately”.
THE MAGAZINE
19 JULY 2010 NATIONAL EXCLUSIVE
INVESTIGATION:
SAMJHAUTA BLAST
https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/dead-in-its-tracks/266147
Dead In Its Tracks
The probe continued as long as Pakistan was seen as
culprit. Enter Hindu angle, and...
On February 18, 2007, a bomb exploded on the
Samjhauta Express which runs between India and Pakistan when it was close to
Panipat. Sixty-eight persons died, many of them Pakistani nationals, and
several others injured. The very next day, the Haryana police constituted a
Special Investigation Team (SIT) and sent its men to different parts of the
country to follow leads. The trail led to Indore where the SIT managed to
locate the Abhinandan Bag Centre in Kothari market, from where the Kodak brand
of suitcase containing the explosives was purchased, the tailor who stitched
the covers of the suitcases located and other evidence. Although no terrorist
outfit has claimed responsibility till date, the government’s first reaction
was to blame Pakistan for it.
But within official circles, it’s widely known that
investigations into the Samjhauta Express blast were discreetly stopped when
the trail led to Hindu activists in Indore. Earlier, the Maharashtra ATS
investigating the Malegaon blasts too had uncovered the Indore link.
Since the government had already accused Pakistan,
a Hindu link would have led to loss of credibility for India.
Sources in the Haryana police told Outlookthat
all their leads pointed to the involvement of “Hindu fundamentalist” elements,
and despite several arrests, they failed to find any evidence of the
involvement of Islamic groups like Indian Mujahideen or SIMI. Why was the probe
stalled then? The commonly given explanation is that when the government’s
policy has been to blame Pakistan for every terrorist incident in India, it
would have damaged the country’s credibility if, after blaming them for the
blast, it was proved to be the work of Hindus.
Crucially, several senior police officials
told Outlook that it was the office of the then National
Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan, which informally advised the police to go
slow on the probe and not investigate the Hindu connection.
Advertisement opens in new window
Interestingly, when the Maharashtra ATS did a narco
test on Lt Col Srikant Purohit as part of its investigation into the Malegaon
blast, it was revealed that though he wasn’t personally involved in the
Samjhauta blast, he seemed to know something about those who were. In September
2007, the Haryana home department wrote to the central government, requesting
the CBI to take over the investigation, but this was not done.
Later, the CBI helped the Haryana police with the
investigations but as an officer connected with it points out, it amounted to
very little. Officers say that the key persons who can shed some light on the
matter are Sandeep Dange and Ramji, both RSS pracharaks. The two have eluded
arrest so far.
