Malegaon - Mecca Masjid - Ajmer Sharif: Evidence implicating Hindutva groups in terrorist activity gathers dust

By Dilip -

Tehelka has accessed 37 audio tapes, two videos and several witness statements that cast further light on the Malegaon blasts case of 2008. This conversation is just a snippet of the voluminous — and self-incriminating — evidence in these tapes which reveal the right-wing Hindutva terror network beyond Sadhvi Pragya and Colonel SP Purohit. The fact that such damning evidence has been in the possession of investigative agencies for a while but has not been acted upon, is testimony to a disturbing unwillingness by the State to unearth the larger conspiracy behind the blasts. .
Transcripts of some of these video and audio tapes were first published in Tehelka on 23 January 2009. They ­expose not just the complicity of members of various ultra Hindutva organisations from across the country but, interestingly, their vituperative hatred even for Sangh Parivar members who they ­believe are diluting their hate agenda against Muslims.
The Maharashtra Anti Terror Squad (ATS) under its late chief, Hemant Karkare, had arrested high-profile seer Dayanand Pandey alias Shankaracharya and Col. SP Purohit for the planning and ­execution of the Malegaon blasts (2008) which claimed five lives. Another blast had taken place around the same time in Modasa, Gujarat, killing one.
The tapes show that the conspiracy was not just restricted to the 12 who were arrested. They throw up names of those who were sympathisers and funders, as suggested by Hemant Karkare in his last ­interview to Tehelka on 25 November 2008, a day before his death. The people mentioned are majors, brigadiers, police chiefs and politicians. But after the filing of the chargesheet, there has been silence.
Damningly, Tehelka also has a copy of an important department communication to a top ats official officials in the beginning of the year, with information on Ramji Kalsangra, a key accused. Kalsangra is wanted not just in the Malegaon blasts case but also for the Ajmer dargah, Mecca Masjid (Hyderabad), Malegaon mosque and Samjhauta Express blasts. Kalsangra was the one who planted the bombs and rode the bike used in the blasts. He was declared absconding. However, the department communication accessed by Tehelka speaks of specific information about Kalsangra’s whereabouts — the fact that he visited his mother on Diwali and Makar Sankranti and was being sheltered by a Patidar family in Gopipur, Madhya Pradesh. It also mentions his voter identity (MP 33 258 192304 Shajapur). Yet no action was taken.
Disillusioned officials say they were dismayed by the disinterest in pursuing these leads. In fact, the nexus between these blasts and the Modasa one now being established by central agencies could have been done much earlier had the ats not sat on the evidence.
At the time of filing its chargesheet in 2009, the Maharashtra ats had asserted that it had a watertight case against the accused. However, it ­remained silent on the involvement of the same accused in the Mecca Masjid blast of May 2007 which killed 14 people as well as the Ajmer dargah blasts of October 2007 which took four lives. It dismissed a statement by Maj. Nitin Joshi, member of Abhinav Bharat, that his colleague Col. Purohit had said that the rdx used in the Malegaon blasts was the same as that used for the Samjhauta blasts... 

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