Pressures force Indian police to blow the lid off Hindutva terror’s face

WSN Bureau

The ugly face of Hindutva terrorism is now out in the open. It is now clear that ultra-Hindu organisations like the RSS-BJ-VHP-Bajrang Dal were involved in blessing and propagating fringe elements like Abhinav Bharat and similar platforms and encouraging terrorism in its most ugly form.

Special wings of Indian police, under massive pressure after the cover got blown, were finally forced to admit that an officer of the Indian army, many of his fellow comrades and Hindu terror organisations were hand in hand in planting bombs, and are now being either feted or defended by RSS parivaar.

Lawyers are being marshalled for them, Uma Bharti wants to give such elements tickets to fight elections, L K Advani publicly praises then and BJP president Rajnath Singh warns everyone not to utter a bad word about them till they are proven guilty. Such is the touching defence of the men and women found involved in blood-soaked instruments of terror.

One Hindu saadhvi, who has earlier been part of the larger RSS parivaar, is widely reported to have admonished the bombers for not ensuring that a far higher number of people died. "Why are there so few dead?" she is said to have asked.

Cops have now found SMS messages sent from Lt-Col Shrikant Purohit to retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay that led to the arrest of Purohit for the September 29 Malegaon bomb blast. He is now behind bars, and Indian establishment which has so far been spouting great praise of its army's ethics and apoliticisation has a black face.

Purohit, 37, was stationed at the Army Education Corps Training College and Centre at Panchmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, where he learnt Arabic. He is the ninth person to be arrested for the terror strike in the textile town that killed six people.

Purohit had attended most of the meetings organised by others accused at Kashmir, Pune, Bhopal, Nashik, and Deolali. Police now believe that he could have been the source for the RDX used in the bomb. He apparently distributed money to several people through his organisation through cheques and cash. He also trained several youths in bomb making..

India has found its own shrill voice to match the world's cry against terror. Instead of getting serious about the causes that give rise to terrorism, it has reduced the war against terror to stereotyping minority Muslims just as it had badnamed the Sikhs in the 1980s-90s.. This reportage brings to the fore the ugly face of Hindutva terror.

Another retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay and former Durga Vahini national executive president Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur are also under arrest. Purohit is the first armyman being booked for a terror act in India. He came in contact with Upadhyay when he was posted at Nashik as liaison unit officer. He was the founding member of Abhinav Bharat, the right-wing radical Hindu outfit whose members allegedly carried out the terror attack in Malegaon.

Police is now probing the fund raisers and the channels for it.

Now it seems that after the network has been so thoroughly exposed, the tentacles may spread deeper and wider. CBI director Ashwani Kumar has gone so far as to suggest that there is a link between the Malegaon blast on September 29 and the one in Nanded two years ago.

After initial bravado, the Sangh Parivar has decided to completely distance itself from Lt-Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit. It now plans to call them a "fringe group". They said such groups had always remained on the periphery of the Parivar for the past several decades, but they never enjoyed the patronage of the leadership. The Sangh Parivar leadership does not want to be seen as having reversed its "tough-on-terror" stand for the sake of Malegaon terrorists. The anti-terrorism squad (ATS) has now established a link between arrested Lt-Col Prasad Purohit and Thane theatre blast accused Dr Hemant Chalke. A homeopath by profession, Chalke was a sympathiser of Sanatan Sanstha and was arrested in June for doing the recce of Vashi’s Bhave theatre where a bomb was found on May 31 this year. Purohit told cops that he knew Chalke and was in touch with him before the September 29 Malegaon blast. Chalke is currently in Arthur Road jail. Chalke and five others were arrested by the ATS for planting bombs in Thane’s Gadkari theatre, a vashi theatre and a cinema hall in Panvel. The ATS probing the September 29 Malegaon bomb blast case is questioning a 37-year-old bogus ‘‘military jawan’’ from Deolali, who was found in possession of a fake cantonment area entry pass in the restricted area. The police suspect that the accused, who frequently visited Bhonsla Military School in Nashik, could have links with the blast suspects. The suspect, Sudhakar Omkarnath Chaturvedi, told the police that he frequently visited the Nashik school to attend ‘‘personality development programmes’’. He holds a masters degree in arts from an Uttar Pradesh university. India's Home Minister of State Shakeel Ahmed has said that the investigation into the Malegaon bomb blast has brought the role of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) under the scanner. “Though investigation in the case is still inconclusive at this stage, fingers have been pointed out towards RSS,” he said.

In that incident, in April 2006, two Bajrang Dal activists were killed while they were allegedly assembling a bomb in a Nanded home. A CBI team has already questioned Lt Col Purohit and other eight accused who were arrested by the ATS.

Director Ashwani Kumar said a link has been indeed established between Nanded and Malegaon blasts.

Now, some saner people plan to pursue the stufff to logical end. Teesta Setalvad of Communalism Combat has said she would file a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the CBI’s Nanded chargesheet.

The CBI director said that the September 29 Malegaon blast — in which five Muslims were killed after Ramzan prayers — is being probed by the ATS alone.

The probe into the Nanded blast had claimed to have exposed the alleged role of a former Indian Navy official in the training of Bajrang Dal activists. It had also identified Bhonsala Military School in Nashik as one venue where such training camps were organised under the supervision of ex-servicemen. And that the training camp was attended by those accused in the Nanded blast.

This is the same school that has come under the scanner now. It was here, ATS officials claim, that in April this year, Lt Col Purohit, Pragya Singh Thakur and other accused held one of a series of meetings before the blasts.

The Nanded blast took place at the residence of a retired Irrigation Department engineer and RSS activist Lakshman Rajkondawar. His son Naresh Rajkondwar and Himanshu Panse, both Bajrang Dal activists, were killed while four were seriously injured.

The ATS named Sanatkumar Ragvithal Bhate, a retired Navy officer from Pune, as one of several witnesses in the case. In his statement to the ATS, he claimed that in March or April 2000, he had received a telephone call from a Bajrang Dal office located near the Saraswati Mandir School in Pune and was allegedly asked by Bajrang Dal leader Milind Parade to train his activists in the use of gelatin sticks at a camp in the city.

Bhate is said to have admitted that he trained around 50 activists, including Himanshu Panse. According to his statements, Bhate was then asked by Parade to help in a bigger camp organised in the Bhonsala Military School, for which Parade and three of his associates carried 300 gelatin sticks with them from Pune.

The ATS has chargesheeted 11 people for criminal conspiracy, all with links to Hindutva organisations. It also linked them to attacks on mosques and against Muslims in towns of Jalna, Parbhani and Purna around that time. Later, the case was transferred to the CBI which filed its chargesheet in March 2008 and dropped charges against Laxman Rajkondwar in whose house the blast had occurred.

12 November 2008