BLAST AFTER BLAST · Jairam Tuptewar and Rahul Manohar Pande – were seriously injured. On hearing of the incident, an as-sistant police inspector (API) from the local Bhagyanagar

4COMMUNALISM COMBATJULY– AUGUST 2008 1 5 Y E A R S

BLAST AFTER BLASTBLAST AFTER BLASTBLAST AFTER BLASTBLAST AFTER BLASTBLAST AFTER BLAST

The news in April 2006 that a bomb had accidentally ex-ploded in the house of an RSS man in Nanded in Maharashtra,killing two persons and injuring four others – all Bajrang Dalactivists – created a national sensation. Initially, the first infor-mation report (FIR) on the incident registered by a local policeofficer unquestioningly recorded the injured activists’ claim thatthe unfortunate incident was the result of an accidental ignitionof firecrackers stored at the site. But within days the police inves-tigation itself revealed that the incident was in fact the result ofan unintended explosion of bombs that were being assembled byHindu extremists with the clear intention of targeting mosquesand terrorising Muslims.

There have been past instances elsewhere in the country alsolinking Hindu extremists to bombs. But in the numerous blaststhat have rocked city after city in India with frightening regularityin recent years the intelligence agencies and the police have in-variably pointed their fingers at Muslim extremist outfits, eitherindigenous or from across the border.

Indian Muslims have repeatedly complained that almost im-mediately after every blast only Muslim names crop up amongthe accused and only Muslim organisations are named as sus-

pect but the charges are rarely, if ever, proved in court. There isconsequently a widespread feeling that terrorist acts by uniden-tified individuals are being used to demonise the entire Muslimcommunity.

It is against this backdrop that the Nanded incident attractedconsiderable attention from secular activists and Muslim organi-sations. A close watch was kept on the investigating agencies toensure that in a case where Hindu extremists had clearly beencaught red-handed there would be proper investigation and pros-ecution. As a result of this sustained public vigilance the casewas handed over from the police to the Anti-Terrorism Squad(ATS) and then from the ATS to the Central Bureau of Investi-gation (CBI).

Communalism Combat has been closely monitoring the Nandedcase from the start. CC’s sustained investigation unravels a storyof police bias, half measures by the ATS and, worst of all, an alltoo apparent bid, ‘Operation Cover-up’, by the CBI. Much wasexpected from the CBI by way of a thorough and non-partisaninvestigation but its conduct has been the most shocking. Thisraises the obvious question: is the apex investigation agency inthe country communally tainted?

Who is responsible?


BY TEESTA SETALVAD

ON THE night of April 5-6, 2006a bomb exploded in the houseof Laxman GundayyaRajkondwar, a retired execu-tive engineer at the PWD,

Nanded. Two persons – NareshRajkondwar and Himanshu Panse – diedon the spot while four of their accom-plices – Maroti Keshav Wagh, YogeshDeshpande (alias Vidulkar), GururajJairam Tuptewar and Rahul ManoharPande – were seriously injured.

On hearing of the incident, an as-sistant police inspector (API) from thelocal Bhagyanagar police station,Ravindra Purushottam Dahedkar, whowas on patrol duty, registered the firstcomplaint. On the say-so of the surviv-ing injured, he registered an FIR. TheFIR said Naresh Rajkondwar was runninga firecracker business from his home.The blast occurred because Rajkondwarand Wagh were smoking too close towhere the firecrackers were stored. Inshort, it was an unfortunate accident.

Was Dahedkar just lazy, naïve, or werehis actions influenced by the popularassumption that only people of a cer-tain community engaged in the crea-tion of bombs and bomb blasts?

It must have been a matter of someembarrassment, in retrospect, for thethen district superintendent of police,Fatehsingh Patil, and the district col-lector of Nanded, Radheshyam Mopalwar.Relying presumably on Dahedkar’s FIR,both of them repeated the firecrackers-did-it story to the media.

Within days however the inspectorgeneral of police, Nanded range, DrSuryaprakash Gupta, set the recordstraight, telling the media that the in-cident involved a bomb blast. Duringexamination the police (Dahedkar him-self) found “splinters” on the bodies ofthe deceased and the injured. A live pipebomb was also found at the explosionsite. It was thus obvious that the fire-cracker story was a deliberate fabrica-tion in order to mislead the police.

Further investigations revealed thatthe deceased and wounded persons wereall active workers of the Bajrang Dal whohad been assembling bombs to target

Muslim places of worship, camouflagingtheir entire operation to resemble a ter-ror operation run by Muslims. LaxmanGundayya Rajkondwar, in whose housethe bombs were being manufactured andwhose son Naresh died in the explosion,is an RSS man. Diaries, important docu-ments, suspicious maps and mobile tel-ephone numbers that were unearthedfrom the houses of the accused incrimi-nated them further. In a manner ofspeaking, members of the sangh parivarwere literally caught red-handed withbombs in their basement.

A frantic effort was made to some-how divert attention from the facts. Alarge quantity of firecrackers, valued atRs 1,20,000, was later found on the siteof the explosion. These had obviouslybeen brought in after the event; de-spite the occurrence of a high inten-sity blast the firecrackers remained in-tact! Where did this large stock of fire-

crackers come from? Why was it storedin a home illegally, without licence? Thevictims were now the accused.

In the first few days following theblasts the police arrested 16 personswho were then remanded to police cus-tody. The remand application high-lighted two points. One, the accusedpersons knowingly provided the po-lice false information on the day ofthe crime, saying the blast was causedby firecrackers when in fact it was abomb blast. Two, investigations hadrevealed that the accused personspossessed diagrams, maps and otherdocumentary material related to themanufacture and storage of bombsand the identification of target ar-eas for the purpose of creating terrorin the country.

Named among the accused were apractising advocate at the Nanded dis-trict court, Milind Arvind Ektate, and amedical practitioner, Dr Umesh Dinkarrao

Deshpande. One of the accused men,Rahul Manohar Pande, had sustainedserious injuries in the blast but hadescaped from the scene and sought sur-reptitious medical attention. AdvocateEktate was among those who helpedPande go into hiding while Dr Deshpandeprovided medical care without notify-ing the police. Curiously, neither of thetwo men had any difficulty in obtain-ing anticipatory bail from the districtcourt. Ektate applied for and was grantedanticipatory bail through an ad interimbail application on April 10 while DrUmesh Dinkarrao Deshpande made asimilar application on April 13. He wasalso granted ad interim bail the sameday following an oral “no objection” fromthe assistant public prosecutor, AJKurtadikar.

As of today, all the accused, apartfrom the absconding Rahul ManoharPande, are out on bail.

Heinous deeds by Hindu extremistsOn May 4, 2006 the case was trans-

ferred to the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS)of the Maharashtra police. By the timethe ATS filed its first charge sheet onAugust 24, 2006, it had already amasseda mountain of damning evidence againsta whole network of Bajrang Dal and othersangh parivar workers engaged in ter-rorist activities. Reproduced below aresome highlights and excerpts from theATS charge sheet:

Highlights The accused persons involved in

assembling the bomb(s) at Nanded werealso responsible for three earlier bombblasts in neighbouring districts: at theMohammadiya Masjid in Parbhani (No-vember 2003), at the Quadriya Masjidin Jalna (August 2004) and at the Meraj-ul-Uloom Madrassa/Masjid in Purna inParbhani district (August 2004). (So farstate police efforts to track down the

Further investigations revealed that the deceasedFurther investigations revealed that the deceasedFurther investigations revealed that the deceasedFurther investigations revealed that the deceasedFurther investigations revealed that the deceasedand wounded persons were all active workers ofand wounded persons were all active workers ofand wounded persons were all active workers ofand wounded persons were all active workers ofand wounded persons were all active workers ofthe Bajrang Dal who had been assembling bombsthe Bajrang Dal who had been assembling bombsthe Bajrang Dal who had been assembling bombsthe Bajrang Dal who had been assembling bombsthe Bajrang Dal who had been assembling bombsto target Muslim places of worship, camouflagingto target Muslim places of worship, camouflagingto target Muslim places of worship, camouflagingto target Muslim places of worship, camouflagingto target Muslim places of worship, camouflagingtheir entire operation to resemble a terrortheir entire operation to resemble a terrortheir entire operation to resemble a terrortheir entire operation to resemble a terrortheir entire operation to resemble a terroroperation run by Muslimsoperation run by Muslimsoperation run by Muslimsoperation run by Muslimsoperation run by Muslims

MAHARASHTRAMAHARASHTRAMAHARASHTRAMAHARASHTRAMAHARASHTRA



perpetrators of these blasts had drawna blank.)

Four of the six prime accused inthe case under investigation – SanjayChoudhary, Himanshu Panse, MarotiKeshav Wagh and Yogesh RavindraDeshpande – had planted bombs atthe Parbhani mosque on November21, 2003.

Two of the six accused – SanjayChoudhary and Gururaj Jairam Tuptewar– admitted to planting bombs at thePurna mosque on August 27, 2004.

One of the six accused – MarotiKeshav Wagh – was charged with plant-ing bombs at the Quadriya Masjid, Jalna,also on August 27, 2004.

Five of the main accused in theNanded blasts were involved in throw-ing acid on a Muslim teacher, ShaikhYousuf Shaikh Gafoor Sahab, in Nandedon April 8, 2001.

The target of the bombs which blewup in their faces on April 5-6, 2006 wasa mosque in Aurangabad. BothHimanshu Panse and Maroti Wagh hadvisited and taken a close look at theAurangabad mosque and its surround-ings in May 2004.

Police raids on the houses andother establishments of the accusedpersons and subsequent search opera-tions uncovered materials in the pos-session of the accused which establishthat they were all active members ofoutfits like the Rashtriya SwayamsevakSangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad(VHP) and the Bajrang Dal.

Evidence against Maroti Wagh in-cludes a register and an identity cardthat clearly links him to the RSS. Paperslinking him to the RSS were confiscatedby the ATS.

A house search of the accused,Gururaj Jairam Tuptewar, revealed thatHimanshu Venkatesh Panse, NareshLaxman Rajkondwar, Maroti KeshavWagh, Yogesh Ravindra Vidulkar(Deshpande), Gururaj Jairam Tuptewar,Rahul Manohar Pande, SanjayChoudhary, Ramdas Ananda Mulange (anemployee of one of the accused) andLaxman Gundayya Rajkondwar were/arehardcore activists of the RSS and theBajrang Dal.

Ten live 7.65 mm cartridges werefound at the site during investigationsand seized by the police. LaxmanRajkondwar kept the live cartridges inhis home illegally. This was one reasonwhy the ATS included LaxmanRajkondwar among the prime accusedin the crime.

Excerpts “Propaganda by these organisa-

tions made them propagate that inno-cent Hindus were being attacked by theextremist Muslim organisations day inand day out and hence the accusedHimanshu Panse, Rahul Manohar Pande,started a gymnasium to mobilise youth.”

“The gymnasium, named PowerZone, was set up in order to uniteyouths and draw them towards theirversion of Hinduism. Panse and Waghstarted a branch of Sangh at Nanded,

Bajrang Nagar, opposite MGM College.Accused Yogesh Vidulkar has alsostarted (a) hostel for orphans at hisresidential house.”

“They have created an anti-Mus-lim atmosphere by organising seminarsand giving speeches aimed at empha-sising how the Muslims commit injus-tice to Hindus and motivating the Hin-dus for doing something for Hinduism;they have organised religious ceremo-nies on the occasions of Hindu NewYear Day, the birth anniversary of Ram,Vijayadashmi, Ganesh festival, Durgafestival and various other Hindu fes-tivals through the organisations RSSand Bajrang Dal in Nanded city andNanded district.”

“In order that the aim of revengeis effectively fulfilled, accused Wagh,Panse, Choudhary and Vidulkar (injured)went to ‘Akanksha Resort’ at the foot ofthe Fort Sinhgad near Pune in 2003 andgot training (in) making pipe bombsfrom a man named Mithun Chakraborty.They got themselves trained for makingthree types of bombs, such as timer

bombs (IEDs). After demonstrating (to)them how to explode these bombs, theexplosives were handed over to Panseby Chakraborty. Panse (also) underwenttraining by the VHP and Bajrang Dal atGoa for two years.”

“Panse and Wagh underwent 40days’ training at Bhonsala MilitarySchool at Nagpur… After returningfrom Pune in the year 2003 (they)exploded bombs at the GousiyaMasjid, Parbhani, for which crime No.61/03 has been registered at theNanal Peth police station.”

“The accused Laxman Rajkondwarallowed his house to be used for themaking of bombs even though he wasaware of the consequences of the bombblasts and possibility of damage to lifeand property.

“The said bombs were to be usedat some place for terrorist and anti-na-

tional activities and they were wellaware that these bombs could kill manypersons and they themselves could losetheir life while handling the saidbombs. They (father and son) had pur-posefully kept (a) huge quantity offirecrackers at their house with inten-tions to make people believe that itwas an accident involving firecrack-ers and not bomb blasts if any suchuntoward incident took place. It hasbeen informed, in writing, by the hon-ourable collector, Nanded, that therewas no legal permission for such accu-mulation of firecrackers.”

“From the ‘Ramdas Raznishi’ andpocket diary confiscated during thehouse search of Wagh, and the mapfound in the pocket diary, it is revealedthat while he was staying at Aurangabadfor (a) BPEd diploma along with hisfriend in the year 2004 Panse visitedthe place in May 2004 and at that timewitness Shrikar Shivsamb Sonawale andthree others went round Aurangabadcity and Panse inspected the masjidcarefully.”

‘Panse and Wagh underwent 40 days’ training at‘Panse and Wagh underwent 40 days’ training at‘Panse and Wagh underwent 40 days’ training at‘Panse and Wagh underwent 40 days’ training at‘Panse and Wagh underwent 40 days’ training atBhonsala Military School at Nagpur. After returningBhonsala Military School at Nagpur. After returningBhonsala Military School at Nagpur. After returningBhonsala Military School at Nagpur. After returningBhonsala Military School at Nagpur. After returningfrom Pune in the year 2003 (they) exploded bombsfrom Pune in the year 2003 (they) exploded bombsfrom Pune in the year 2003 (they) exploded bombsfrom Pune in the year 2003 (they) exploded bombsfrom Pune in the year 2003 (they) exploded bombsat the Gousiya Masjid, Parbhani’at the Gousiya Masjid, Parbhani’at the Gousiya Masjid, Parbhani’at the Gousiya Masjid, Parbhani’at the Gousiya Masjid, Parbhani’



“From the false beard and mous-tache confiscated during the housesearch of Himanshu Venkatesh Panse andthe conversation on mobile No.9822297494 of witness Atul VinodKamtikar, it was revealed that Wagh wasto visit Aurangabad on April 5, 2006…and hence (a) motorcycle was kept readyon April 4, 2004 at Dhoot Motors, ofSachin Suresh Kadam, for carrying outsome work at Aurangabad.”

“All these facts reveal that theseaccused had preplanned a bomb ex-plosion at some mosque for the pur-pose of creating unrest among Hin-dus and Muslims.”

Highlights Based on its findings, the ATS in-

cluded Sanatkumar Ragvithal Bhate, aPune resident, in the list of witnesses.In his statements given to the ATS onApril 20 and May 18, 2006 Bhate re-vealed that he had been with the RSSsince 1996 and was formerly a memberof the Indian navy. Bhate confessed thatin March or April 2000 he received atelephone call from the office of theBajrang Dal situated behind theSaraswati Mandir School, Pune. Dalleader Milind Parade requested Bhate totrain his activists, due to arrive in Punefor a camp, in the use of “short sticks”(gelatine sticks). He admitted to attend-ing the camp to carry out the requestedtraining. Around 40-50 state-level ac-tivists attended the camp at which oneof the accused, Himanshu Panse, wasthe group leader. Bhate said he metPanse at the camp. Parade then re-quested Bhate to also participate in anupcoming national-level camp of activ-ists at the Bhonsala Military School,Nagpur. Parade and three of his disci-ples from Pune carried 300 sticks withthem for this camp, said Bhate. Why wasBhate not named among the accusedby the investigating agencies, not evenby the ATS?

Bhate stated that on arriving atthe Bhonsala Military School he learntthat the camp had been organised bythe RSS to give karate, ground obsta-cles and revolver firing training to par-ticipants. Two retired ex-servicemenwho were present at the camp trained


In May 2006 Communalism Combat had interviewed the then chief ofMaharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), KP Raghuvanshi. The text ofthe full interview was published in CC in June 2006. Reproduced hereare excerpts from the interview:

Q: There have been two recent incidents of alleged terrorism (in the state):in April (2006) when youth manufacturing bombs at Nanded died as a bombexploded unexpectedly and the attempt on the RSS headquarters at Nagpur inMay. How do you view these incidents?

A: Unfortunately, one (Nanded incident) is a terrorist act by Hindusand the other (Nagpur incident) by Muslims trained in Pakistan.

Q: The administration is perceived to be tight-lipped about the Nanded inci-dent while speaking repeatedly of Nagpur, Malegaon and Aurangabad (thearms haul). Is there any policy decision behind this selective treatment?

A: Both incidents are being handled with the same vigour. Both are serious.In the Nanded case the very fact that the investigation has been handed overto us, the ATS, shows how the administration and government are viewing it.Investigations are on. Two persons making the bombs died on the spot... Thehouse was the residence of the local Bajrang Dal and VHP activist.

This is the same group of terrorists responsible for the bomb blasts atthe Parbhani mosque in (November) 2003, an incident in which 25 per-sons were injured. Until now we do not know for sure if they are linked tothe other masjid bomb blasts at Purna and Jalna (August 2004, in which18 persons were injured). Now we are awaiting the go-ahead from thedoctor to interrogate them to get further leads. We have applied the pro-visions of the Unlawful Practices Act. It is clear that these bombs were notbeing manufactured for a puja. They were being manufactured for unlawfulends to wreak violence through terror. There is no question of going slowon the investigation.

Q: Is there a specially worked out drill that is followed by the police for such‘terrorist operations’? Some serious questions about the Nagpur incident were raisedby a citizens’ fact-finding committee. One general criticism is that the ‘terrorists’ areoften killed and diaries with a long list of convenient details found?

A: I accept that there is this general criticism that terrorists capturedin such operations are killed, diaries found, etc. I can only state that forsuch operations the police are trained so that if there is firing, theymust shoot to kill.

May I ask you a question? Why are no questions raised by fact-findingteams about the arms hauls in Malegaon and Aurangabad and the identity ofthe accused who have been arrested? The haul is there for all to see. Theaccused are alive, not dead. No parents or relatives have cried foul sayingthat they are victims of a ‘false arrest’. Do you have any idea of the amount ofammunition hauled? Huge caches of AK-47s – no one can say that they hadbeen falsely placed there by us! RDX in quantities several times’ larger thanwhat was found and used in the multiple bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993.

Nanded is a serious development and has frightening repercussions ifwe find, through investigations, that this was not an isolated incidentbut also part of an organised pattern. But the incident that was foiled inNagpur and the arms hauls in Malegaon and Aurangabad – which we see asdistinct and separate transactions – cannot simply be underplayed or over-looked either.

‘Hindu bombs’ and ‘Muslim bombs’


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participants in revolver handling. Alsoattending was a senior retired officerfrom the Intelligence Bureau (IB). Inall there were 115 participants from allover India at the camp.

Govind Nagacharya Puranik, aBSNL employee at the Nanded tel-ephone exchange, also played a keyrole in the nefarious activities. A mem-ber of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sanghtrade union affiliated to the RSS,Puranik revealed in his recorded state-ments to the police and the ATS be-tween April and June 2006 that he hadbeen attending RSS camps since 2000.Puranik, a well-educated man, was fullyaware of the terrorist designs ofHimanshu Panse, Naresh Rajkondwar,Rahul Pande and others. He nonethe-less provided logistical support fortheir criminal activities for a numberof years. He financed and helped theaccused persons both before and af-ter the Nanded incident. Fearing anarrest, Puranik filed an anticipatorybail application before the sessionscourt, Nanded. The court readilygranted him anticipatory bail!

Also implicated by the ATS wasShrikar Shivsambh Sonwale, a Nandedresident. In a recorded statement to theATS in May 2006 Sonwale admitted to aclose friendship with several of the mainaccused in the Nanded incident. Hestated that while they were drinkingtogether one evening Maroti Wagh hadtold him in great detail how HimanshuPanse and he had detonated a bomb ina Parbhani mosque (November 2003).This showed that Sonwale knew aboutWagh and Panse’s involvement in a ter-rorist act. But he withheld this vitalinformation from the police. Had heinformed the police at that point intime Panse and gang could have beenapprehended and the explosions thatfollowed at other places could have beenprevented.

The search operation at Panse’shouse unearthed items of disguise – anartificial beard, shervani, etc – used inorder to assume the appearance of aMuslim. The police and the ATS collectedsufficient evidence against all the ac-cused to establish that they were per-petrators and masterminds of the blasts

carried out at regular intervals in dif-ferent districts of Maharashtra. The ob-vious conclusion drawn was that it wasthe intention of Bajrang Dal activistsand their sangh parivar affiliates to tar-get Muslims with terrorist acts and makeit appear that Muslim extremists wereinvolved in targeting fellow Muslims.This would help advance the sanghparivar’s agenda of spreading hatredagainst Indian Muslims, projecting themas the perpetrators of every blast in cityafter city in India.

The first charge sheet filed by theATS on August 24, 2006 named sevenaccused – Rahul Pande, Laxman G.Rajkondwar, Sanjay Choudhary, RamdasMulange, Dr Umesh Deshpande,Himanshu Panse (deceased) and NareshRajkondwar (deceased). (Maroti Wagh,

Yogesh D. Vidulkar and Gururaj JairamTuptewar, who were all present at thebomb-making site, were absent from thefirst list of accused).

They were charged under Sections304 (culpable homicide not amountingto murder), 286 (negligent conduct),338 (grievous hurt), 201(destroyingevidence), 202 (withholding informa-tion on a crime), 203 (providing falseinformation), 212 (harbouring an of-fender), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 34(common intent) and 109 (abetment)of the Indian Penal Code (IPC); alongwith Sections 3 (causing an explosionlikely to endanger life, person or prop-erty), 4 (attempting to cause or mak-ing or keeping explosives likely to en-danger life or damage property), 5 (mak-ing explosives under suspicious circum-stances) and 6 (abetment) of the Ex-plosive Substances Act 1908; Sections3, 25 and 35 (unlawful possession ofarms) of the Arms Act 1959; and Sec-

tions 18 (attempting to commit or abet-ting a terrorist act) and 23 (unauthor-ised possession of bombs, etc with in-tent to aid terrorist act) of the Unlaw-ful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 (asamended in 2004).

The most serious charges against theaccused, and for which the most strin-gent punishments are provided, are theones that fall within the purview of theUnlawful Activities Act and Section 304of the IPC. (See box for punishments pro-vided under the former.)

After conducting further investiga-tions the ATS filed a supplementarycharge sheet on November 11, 2006naming four more accused – MarotiWagh, Yogesh D. Vidulkar, Gururaj JairamTuptewar and Milind Ektate. They toowere slapped with identical charges.

However, none of the abetters or mas-terminds behind the conspiracy, MithunChakraborty or Bajrang Dal leaders, wereincriminated.

To its credit, the ATS did a reason-able job at the level of investigation,uncovering a hitherto unknown terror-ist network in Maharashtra of Hinduextremists linked to the sangh parivar.Given the seriousness of the case, evi-dent through its own findings, onewould have expected the ATS to pro-ceed with both promptitude and deter-mination to ensure that all those whowere guilty were brought to book andthe terrorist network was exposed. Thetwo charge sheets filed by the ATS donot however reflect the very gravity ofits findings. It appears from what fol-lows that at some point in the courseof proceedings the ATS took a suddenU-turn. A public outcry then forced thegovernment to transfer the case fromthe ATS to the CBI. But the CBI’s con-

To its credit, the ATS did a reasonable job at the levelTo its credit, the ATS did a reasonable job at the levelTo its credit, the ATS did a reasonable job at the levelTo its credit, the ATS did a reasonable job at the levelTo its credit, the ATS did a reasonable job at the levelof investigation. It appears from what follows that atof investigation. It appears from what follows that atof investigation. It appears from what follows that atof investigation. It appears from what follows that atof investigation. It appears from what follows that atsome point in the course of proceedings the ATS took asome point in the course of proceedings the ATS took asome point in the course of proceedings the ATS took asome point in the course of proceedings the ATS took asome point in the course of proceedings the ATS took asudden U-turn. A public outcry then forced thesudden U-turn. A public outcry then forced thesudden U-turn. A public outcry then forced thesudden U-turn. A public outcry then forced thesudden U-turn. A public outcry then forced thegovernment to transfer the case from the ATS to thegovernment to transfer the case from the ATS to thegovernment to transfer the case from the ATS to thegovernment to transfer the case from the ATS to thegovernment to transfer the case from the ATS to theCBI. But the CBI’s conduct was questionable in theCBI. But the CBI’s conduct was questionable in theCBI. But the CBI’s conduct was questionable in theCBI. But the CBI’s conduct was questionable in theCBI. But the CBI’s conduct was questionable in theextreme; doing little to follow up on the many leadsextreme; doing little to follow up on the many leadsextreme; doing little to follow up on the many leadsextreme; doing little to follow up on the many leadsextreme; doing little to follow up on the many leadsprovided by the ATS, it only served to weaken the case.provided by the ATS, it only served to weaken the case.provided by the ATS, it only served to weaken the case.provided by the ATS, it only served to weaken the case.provided by the ATS, it only served to weaken the case.


duct was questionable in the extreme;doing little to follow up on the manyleads provided by the ATS, it only servedto weaken the case.

The investigating agencies them-selves warrant investigation and this isCC’s “charge sheet” against them.

State police: inefficient or biased?What is the explanation for the

Maharashtra police’s earlier failure inidentifying and booking the real per-petrators of the bomb blasts at theParbhani, Jalna and Purnamosques which took place in2003 and 2004, two years be-fore the blasts in Nanded? Alack of professionalism in in-telligence-gathering and inconducting investigations? Asanghi mind-set that believesonly members of a certaincommunity would commit ter-rorist acts? Or intentionallyshielding the guilty, acting ei-ther of its own volition orunder political pressure?

ATS: Half measures? On July 29, 2006 the ATS

sought permission from thedistrict collector, Nanded, tofile its charge sheet against 21accused persons. To make sucha plea the ATS must have beenconfident that it had suffi-cient evidence to prove thatall 21 persons were party tothe crime. But inexplicably,barely three weeks later itwrote to the additional chiefsecretary of Maharashtra, seeking sanc-tion for the prosecution of only sevenpersons from its own list of 21 accused,dropping all charges against 11 othersand seeking permission to bring forthevidence against the remaining two –Advocate Milind Ektate and the elusiveMithun Chakraborty – only one of whomwas ultimately charged. (As mentionedearlier, a supplementary charge sheetadded four more persons, includingEktate but not Chakraborty, to the listof accused.) Mithun Chakraborty wasmysteriously excluded from the scopeof further investigation even after theCBI took over the case. In fact, the CBI

has not explored any leads on the train-ing and finance provided to the terror-ist network, leaving gaping holes in thebureau’s charge sheet.

The ATS, despite evidence gatheredthrough investigations and supple-mented by narco analysis test reports,was similarly reluctant to probe the roleof institutions like the Bhonsala Mili-tary School in Nagpur or the AkankshaResort in Sinhgad, Pune, in the possi-ble training of terror groups.

“During the course of investigation,

no sufficient evidence is found againstthe below-mentioned arrested accusedpersons hence they are discharged fromthe case vide Section 169 CrPC,” saidthe ATS missive addressed to the addi-tional chief secretary. The ATS then pro-ceeded to file its charge sheet on Au-gust 24, 2006 along with a request todischarge 11 accused, absolving themof any links to the crime.

The accused persons whom the ATSwanted to discharge were: VinodVenkatrao Mahalkar, Santosh PrakashParlikar, Nimesh Sudhakar Limaye,Janardhan Yashwantrao Wakodikar,Santosh Keshavrao Wagh, Keshavrao P.

Wagh, Jairam D. Tuptewar, DeviprasadJairam Tuptewar, Raju VithalraoChoudhary, Ravindra Ramrao Vidulkarand Mukul Ramesh Pande. From theirnames it appears that some of these menare relatives of some of the accused.

Was the ATS acting under politicalpressure, prompting it to make a U-turnat the last minute only to shield manyof the accused?

The ATS had earlier charged all21 accused with seven crimes, threeof which related to the bomb blasts

at Parbhani, Purna and Jalna. Whatstopped the ATS from booking themunder the draconian MaharashtraContro l of Organised Cr ime Act(MCOCA) which the ATS freely ap-p l i ed in the 7/11 b l a s t s , theMalegaon blasts and the AurangabadRDX haul?

(CC agrees with other human rightsactivists and groups who argue thatgiven the right professional orientationand training, the existing laws of theland are more than adequate for the po-lice to deal with even the worst kindsof crime. Conferring greater powers onan inept, unprofessional and highly po-


Terror squads



What constitutes a terrorist act (Sec. 15):Whoever, with intent to threaten the unity, integrity, secu-

rity or sovereignty of India or to strike terror in the people orany section of the people in India or in any foreign country,does any act by using bombs, dynamite or other explosive sub-stances or inflammable substances or firearms or other lethalweapons or poisons or noxious gases or other chemicals or byany other substances (whether biological or otherwise) of ahazardous nature, in such a manner as to cause, or likely tocause, death of, or injuries to any person or persons or loss of,or damage to, or destruction of, property or disruption of anysupplies or services essential to the life of the community inIndia or in any foreign country or causes damage or destructionof any property or equipment used or intended to be used forthe defence of India or in connection with any other purposesof the Government of India, any state government or any oftheir agencies, or detains any person and threatens to kill orinjure such person in order to compel the government in Indiaor the government of a foreign country or any other person todo or abstain from doing any act, commits a terrorist act.

Punishment for terrorist (Sec. 16):Whoever commits a terrorist act shall –(a) if such act has resulted in the death of any person, be

punishable with death or imprisonment for life, and shall alsobe liable to fine;

(b) in any other case, be punishable with imprisonment for aterm which shall not be less than five years but which mayextend to imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.

Punishment for funding terrorist act (Sec. 17):Whoever raises funds for the purpose of committing a terrorist

act shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shallnot be less than five years but which may extend to imprisonmentfor life, and shall also be liable to fine.

Punishment for being part of terrorist conspiracy (Sec. 18):Whoever conspires or attempts to commit, or advocates, abets,

advises or incites or knowingly facilitates the commission of aterrorist act, or any act preparatory to the commission of aterrorist act, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a termwhich shall not be less than five years but which may extend toimprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.

Punishment for hiding terrorist (Sec. 19):Whoever voluntarily harbours or conceals, or attempts to

harbour or conceal any person knowing that such person is aterrorist shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term whichshall not be less than three years but which may extend toimprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine:

Provided that this section shall not apply to any case in whichthe harbour or concealment is by the spouse of the offender.

Punishment for being member of terrorist gang or organisa-tion (Sec. 20):

Any person who is a member of a terrorist gang or a terroristorganisation, which is involved in terrorist act, shall be punishablewith imprisonment for a term which may extend to imprisonmentfor life, and shall also be liable to fine.

Punishment possessing explosives etc. for aiding terror-ism (Sec. 23):

(1) If any person with intent to aid any terrorist contravenesany provision of, or any rule made under the Explosives Act 1884or the Explosive Substances Act 1908 or the Inflammable Sub-stances Act 1952 or the Arms Act 1959, or is in unauthorisedpossession of any bomb, dynamite or hazardous explosive sub-stance or other lethal weapon or substance capable of mass de-struction or biological or chemical substance of warfare, he shall,notwithstanding anything contained in any of the aforesaid acts orthe rules made thereunder, be punishable with imprisonment for aterm which shall not be less than five years but which may extendto imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.

(2) Any person who, with intent to aid any terrorist, attemptsto contravene or abets, or does any act preparatory to contra-vention of any provision of any law or rule specified in subsection(1), shall be deemed to have contravened that provision undersubsection (1) and the provisions of that subsection in relation tosuch person, have effect subject to the modification that thereference to “imprisonment for life” therein shall be construedas a reference to “imprisonment for ten years”.

Definition of a terrorist gang (Sec. 4l):“Terrorist gang” means any association, other than terrorist

organisation, whether systematic or otherwise, which is con-cerned with, or involved in, terrorist act.

Definition of a terrorist organisation (Sec. 4m):“Terrorist organisation” means an organisation listed in the

schedule or an organisation operating under the same name asan organisation so listed;

Definition of unlawful activity (Sec. 4o):“Unlawful activity”, in relation to an individual or asso-

ciation, means any action taken by such individual or asso-ciation (whether by committing an act or by words, eitherspoken or written, or by signs or by visible representationor otherwise) –

(i) which is intended, or supports any claim, to bring about,on any ground whatsoever, the cession of a part of the territoryof India or the secession of a part of the territory of India fromthe union, or which incites any individual or group of individu-als to bring about such cession or secession; or

(ii) which disclaims, questions, disrupts or is intended to disruptthe sovereignty and territorial integrity of India; or

(iii) which causes or is intended to cause disaffectionagainst India

Definition of unlawful activity (Sec. 4p):“Unlawful association” means any association –(i) which has for its object any unlawful activity, or which

encourages or aids persons to undertake any unlawful activity,or of which the members undertake such activity; or

(ii) which has for its object any activity which is punish-able under Section 153A or Section 153B of the IndianPenal Code, or which encourages or aids persons to under-take any such activity, or of which the members undertakeany such activity

Punishment for terrorist activities(Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967)


liticised police force through draconianlaws like MCOCA will only result in themisuse of these powers even againstinnocent citizens. But given that anact like MCOCA does exist, why is itbeing selectively used? Do our inves-tigating agencies also discriminatebetween “good terrorists” and “badterrorists”?).

CBI: Operation Cover-up?Considering the circum-

stances in which the CBIwas brought into the pic-ture, one would have ex-pected the country’s pre-mier investigating agencyto conduct nothing lessthan a thorough, free, fairand transparent investiga-tion so that the real cul-prits and masterminds ofthe crime could be identi-f ied, caught and pun-ished. Instead, the CBIchose to function behinda veil of secrecy, refusingto brief the public at allabout the investigationsand thus raising suspicionsabout its unprofessionalconduct.

Although the CBI sub-mitted its charge sheet inthe case more than fivemonths ago, CC had tomake repeated applica-tions under the Right toInformation Act before wewere allowed to access thecharge sheet and the ac-companying records. Andthe reason why the au-thorities were so reluctantto part with these docu-ments becomes evident from a perusalof the charge sheet. Far from risingto the occasion, the CBI has provedunwilling or incapable of pursuingthe leads provided to it by the ATSinvestigations. Far worse, it hasended up diluting the ATS case. Pre-sented below are some of the obviouslacunae in the CBI’s charge sheet, ex-amples of the bureau’s acts of commis-sion and omission:

Acts of commissionThe two ATS charge sheets accuse 11

persons of being part of a criminal con-spiracy involving terrorist acts: a veryserious charge against all of them. Butthe CBI did not even consider the pos-sibility of such a conspiracy. In glaringcontrast to the ATS approach, it simplyrefused to explore the forward or back-ward linkages to the accidental explo-

sion at Laxman Rajkondwar’s house inApril 2006 except to the very limitedextent of naming those who shelteredthe injured fugitive, Rahul Pande, fromthe police or gave him surreptitious medi-cal help. The CBI divided the 11 accusedinto three categories and then proceededto completely dilute the charges against10 of them. The one remaining accusedwas absolved of all charges.

The CBI holds the six accused whowere present at the explosion spot (andwho died or were seriously injured inthe incident) as collectively responsi-ble only for the following offences: forcausing the explosion with the fullknowledge that such an explosion canclaim lives (Sec. 304, IPC: culpablehomicide not amounting to murder), fornegligent conduct (Sec. 286, IPC), for

causing grievous injury (Sec.338, IPC), for possession andcontrol of explosive sub-stances (Sec. 4b and 5, Ex-plosives Substances Act) andfor unauthorised possessionof 10 live cartridges (Sec. 25of the Arms Act).

As for the other four co-accused – Sanjay Choudhary,Ramdas Mulange, Dr UmeshDeshpande and Milind ArvindEktate – the charges againstthem are limited to: culpablehomicide not amounting tomurder (Sec. 304, IPC), neg-ligent conduct with respectto explosives (Sec. 286, IPC),grievous hurt to others (Sec.338, IPC), intentional omis-sion to give information ofan offence (Sec. 202, IPC),harbouring an offender (Sec.212, IPC), and abetment ofan assault (Sec. 134, IPC).

Laxman G. Rajkondwar, theowner of house where theexplosion took place, who,according to the ATS chargesheet, was as involved in thecrime as his deceased son,has been let off the hook.

In short, the Unlawful Ac-tivities (Prevention) Act 1967(as amended in 2004) was

conspicuously not applied against anyof the accused. Similarly, Section 120Bof the IPC, for criminal conspiracy, hasnot been applied against anyone.

Acts of omissionThe CBI’s acts of omission are as se-

rious, if not more so, than its acts ofcommission:

For the ATS the accidental explo-sion in Nanded turns out to be only one




episode in a diabolical terrorist plotinvolving a nefarious network ofBajrang Dal activists functioning withcovert support from other wings of thesangh parivar. But for the CBI the soleconcern appears to be to treat theNanded incident as an isolated caseso that the trial, which is conductedon the basis of the charge sheet, doesnot even examine the possible exist-ence of a terrorist network inMaharashtra. A network that is en-gaged in hate-mongering, is linked toinstitutions where former intelligenceofficials and army men train cadres inthe handling of arms and explosives,and which collects funds and providesother logistical support.

Why did the ATS not apply theprovisions of MCOCA to the accusedwhen according to its own find-ings the accused were implicatedin terrorist acts? This is a ques-t ion that the CBI shou ld haveprobed. But it did not even raisethe subject. Why not?

Contrary to the findings of theATS, the CBI does not utter a wordabout the links that the accused per-

sons had with the RSS, the Bajrang Daland the VHP. Why?

The ATS investigation clearly es-tablishes the existence of a terroristnexus operating under the wider sanghparivar umbrella. The CBI should havefollowed this up after it took chargeof the case. What is the real agenda ofthe Bhonsala Military School in Nagpur?Who owns and runs the Akanksha Re-sort in Pune? Is it linked in some waywith the Bajrang Dal/VHP/RSS? Whoamong the RSS/VHP were involved andwhere in Goa were the Bajrang Dal ac-tivists trained? Who are the financiers,trainers (Mithun Chakraborty andSanatkumar Ragvithal Bhate) and otherindividuals who actively participated,either directly or indirectly, in perpe-trating terror attacks? Who are the re-tired officers of the military and intel-ligence services who provided martialarts and military training to BajrangDal activists? Why have officers whoduring their professional careers sworeto serve secular-democratic India nowchosen to place themselves at the serv-ice of Hindu extremists? For reasonsbest known to itself the CBI has not

followed up on the leads that the ATSinvestigation provided.

The ATS named LaxmanRajkondwar, the owner of the housein which the blast occurred, amongthe prime accused. But the CBI chargesheet absolves him of all charges. In-vestigators found that firecrackersworth Rs 1,20,000 had been illegallystored at the site. Such a large quan-tity of highly combustible materialwould undoubtedly have blown up inthe blast. Thus the only inference onecan make is that the stock of fireworkswas put in place after the blasts, as asubterfuge. From where was such alarge stock of firecrackers procured atsuch short notice? This is a questionthat does not seem to concern the CBI.How did the CBI al low LaxmanRajkondwar to go scot-free?

The CBI not only chose to com-pletely disregard the information gath-ered by the ATS through narco tests con-ducted on four of the accused (see box),but also gave little credence to the in-criminating material seized duringhouse searches and the admissions ofsome of the accused during interroga-

The CBI did not find it necessary to probe the possiblerole of the Bhonsala Military School in the training metedout to young recruits of the sangh’s bomb-making bri-gade as revealed by the ATS investigations. The schoolhas two known branches – in Nashik and in Nagpur.

A quick exploration of the websites of both branchesreveals that the inspiration behind the Bhonsala MilitarySchool was ‘Dharmaveer’ Dr BS Moonje, a founder of theRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Clearly then, the in-stitute is at least ideologically tied to the sangh parivar.The school is graced by regular visits from senior armyofficials:

“Dr BS Moonje was a firm believer in military trainingto Indian youth; he formed the Central Hindu MilitaryEducation Society at Nashik in 1937 and started the schoolon June 12, 1937. It started functioning in the ‘surganapalace’, Nashik city, with 90 students. It moved to itspresent location, named ‘Rambhoomi’ by Dr Moonje, onSeptember 1, 1938.

“Spread over 65 hectares of land surrounded by azurehilly landscape, the school campus consists of the mainschool building, 14 bhawans (hostels), a common mess,playground (including a 400m athletic track), stables anda riding school. The academic section has a well-stocked

library. The school also maintains a health centre with full-time medical personnel.

“Boys between nine-and-a-half and 10-and-a-half yearsof age are admitted to Class V, which is the lowest class inthe school. A number of scholarships have been institutedby the state government and the society for deservingstudents. The KC Mahindra Education Foundation also of-fers some scholarships.

“The motto of the school, as given by the founder,aptly and precisely sums up the aim of the school. It isnot obligatory on part of the students of the schoolto join the military services. However, those who arereally willing to join the noble profession of arms willcertainly find their training useful towards their aim.Whereas the rest will find themselves mentally andphysically fit to pursue any career in the present com-petitive world.

“Air Marshal JS Apte, senior maintenance staff officer ofHQ Maintenance Command, IAF, visited Bhonsala MilitarySchool, Nagpur, in 2007. Air Marshal Apte appreciated thehigh standards achieved by the school in all spheres ofactivities. He congratulated all ranks of the school for theirdedication and committed hard work put up by them forthe glory of their institution. ”

The Bhonsala School


tion. If the CBI had acted as it should,it would have applied for the earliercases of bomb blasts by several of thoseaccused in the Nanded blasts (inmosques in Parbhani, Jalna and Purnain 2003 and 2004) to be clubbed to-gether and prosecuted as part of awider conspiracy. Had it done so itcould also have set into motion themany stringent provisions ofthe Unlawful Activities (Preven-tion) Act: Section 16 (commit-ting a terrorist act), Section 17(punishment for funding a ter-rorist act), Section 18 (beingpart of a terrorist conspiracy),Section 19 (punishment forharbouring a terrorist) andmost importantly, Section 20(punishment for being a mem-ber of a terrorist gang). Thefindings of the ATS leave littleroom for doubt that the BajrangDal falls well within the act’sdefinition of a “terrorist gang”.To pursue this line of investi-gation the CBI would no doubthave needed to follow up onthe leads provided by the ATS.But, as mentioned earlier, itwas disinclined to even con-sider the option.

ConclusionThrough its creditworthy in-

vestigation of the accidentalblast in Nanded, the ATS un-covered a dangerous terroristnetwork. Its investigations re-vealed that the bomb blasts atParbhani, Jalna, Purna and Nandedwere no ordinary crimes with simplemotives. Involved in each of them wereactivists of the Bajrang Dal who hadsought and received systematic train-ing from experts in bomb-making andbomb explosion. Their insidious actsof terror at mosques include not justplanting the bombs but also disguis-ing themselves as Muslims while com-mitting the crimes.

The ATS investigations further re-vealed that it was not just a handfulbut as many as three dozen Bajrang Dalisfrom all over Maharashtra who receivedtraining in Pune where more than a hun-

dred of them from all over India weresimilarly trained at the Bhonsala Mili-tary School in Nagpur. While the Punecamp was organised by the Bajrang Dal,the Nagpur one was organised by itsparent body, the RSS. And while thosedirectly involved in lobbing the bombswere Bajrang Dal members, there are clearindications that the RSS and the VHP

also form part of the nexus. The menwho imparted this training to theDal’s cadres included retired officersof the country’s military and intelli-gence services.

According to the admissions of sev-eral of the accused, their agenda wasto challenge what they regarded as“Muslim bombs” with “Hindu bombs”. Atthe same time it was clearly part of theHindu extremist strategy to make theirmalevolent actions appear as if they werethe work of Muslim extremists.

All of this is truly sinister and raisesseveral very disturbing questions:


Is “Hindu terrorism” now an inte-gral part of the sangh parivar’s “HateMuslims” agenda, at least for the BajrangDal, acting with the covert blessing ofand logistical support from sectionswithin the VHP and even the RSS?

How do we know that the BajrangDal and others have not been conduct-ing similar bomb training camps in

states other than Maharashtra?(After all, but for the bomb blow-ing up accidentally in Nandedthe Maharashtra police mightstill be clueless about the peo-ple involved in the local terrorplot. The way investigationshave been conducted into thesecond accidental blast inNanded in 2007 – see accompa-nying story – raises other seri-ous issues.)

Has communal violence nowdonned a terrorist garb on bothsides of the communal divide?

If as part of their strategyHindu extremists disguise them-selves as Muslims and then en-gage in terrorist activity, couldthey also be responsible forsending out emails claiming re-sponsibility for blasts under as-sumed Muslim names and usingan Islamic vocabulary?

How then can we know whois responsible for the series ofblasts that have ripped througha succession of Indian cities?

What then of national se-curity, public peace and com-munal harmony?

Are our investigating andintelligence agencies also handicappedby their ideological blinkers insomuchas they are blind to or soft on acts of“Hindu terrorism”?

The spate of blasts in Panvel andThane in May-June 2008 where onceagain some Hindu extremist outfits havebeen implicated lends an added urgencyto these questions. Given the CBI’s mis-erable failure in taking the ATS investi-gations forward, only an open and indepth inquiry carried out by a high courtjudge will help trace the tentacles ofthis hitherto unsuspected monster thatthreatens national security, public peaceand harmony.

Villainous conspiracy



Sanjay alias Bhaurao VithalraoChoudhary

Himanshu was his friend and was in-volved in the Parbhani (mosque) blast. He(Sanjay) owned a gym in partnership withRahul Pande. He would often go to Pune,as he had his brothers there, staying nearSinhgad. Regarding the training to pre-pare the bombs, he said that there werefour of them (who received training): him-self, Maroti Wagh, Himanshu Panse andYogesh Deshpande Vidulkar who had un-dergone training at Sinhgad in Pune.

He said that he did not knowwhether Himanshu had undergone anyof the training programmes earlier or(whether this was) for the first time.He said that the training programmewas for two-three days. They weretrained to prepare three types of bombs.(He gives details of the three types.)Regarding the explosive material(used), he said that both red and whitepowders are used and the bombs theyhad learnt to prepare were very small.

The person who had given themtraining was called ‘Sir’ by Himanshu.His name was Mithun Chakraborty. Hehad a beard, was tall and stoutly built.After the training Chakraborty gavethem a bag containing the materialsused for preparing a bomb.

About the blast at the Parbhani(mosque), Sanjay said that Himanshuhad asked him to visit Pune to meet animportant person. Neither Himanshu nor“the important person”, who met himon his arrival at Pune station and drovehim to the Kshatriya Lodge himself, dis-closed his name. Nobody visited Sanjayduring his stay at the Lodge and he wasadvised not to go outside. OnHimanshu’s suggestion, Sanjay travelledto Pune and checked into the Lodge inhis real name. Himanshu paid for all theexpenses and asked Sanjay to remain inPune for two-three days. Sanjay said thatthis arrangement was made due toHimanshu’s plan to blast a bomb atParbhani. He said that Naresh andMaroti had accompanied Himanshu toParbhani. All three had travelled on abike. He further said it was Himanshuwho hurled the bomb.

Sanjay also revealed that in the Jalnablast Rahul had accompanied Himanshu.In all the blasts the main leader wasYogesh Vidulkar and Himanshu was nextin line. Himanshu had more faith inNaresh Rajkondwar. Regarding Gururaj,he said that during one of his visits tothe gym he had seen Gururaj withHimanshu. Sanjay said that he belongedto the SC (scheduled caste) categoryand these people had identified him forhis boldness and had helped him in hiseducation.

Sanjay said Himanshu often called upsenior leaders, Balaji Pakhare and otherleaders of the RSS in Mumbai. Himanshuwas receiving financial support for theseactivities from the Bajrang Dal and RSSin Mumbai and Pune.

Regarding the explosion at Naresh’shouse (in Nanded), he said that Nareshand Himanshu had died on the spot.He said following this blast there wasno leader for their group. Sanjay addedthat he was now afraid, as they had in-dulged in illegal activities. However,they would keep coming to him (Sanjay)and persuade him to carry out the workof fighting terrorism. He was told ter-rorists had killed (Kashmiri) Pandits atthe Vaishno Devi temple for no reason.So they had decided to see to it thatthis was not repeated. Himanshuplanned to take revenge on Muslims and

to safeguard the rights of Hindu women.At one of the meetings that Himanshuhad set up Himanshu enjoined all thosepresent to join the fight against Paki-stan-supported Muslim terrorism.

He revealed that Himanshu wanted totake revenge on terrorists like Abu Salemwho, he said, had blasted a bomb at In-dia Gate (Gateway of India) in Mumbai,killing lots of innocent people. He addedthat during the meeting Himanshu hadtalked against terrorist Abu Salem andDawood Ibrahim for going unpunishedeven though they had committed a seriesof crimes. So they decided to target theMuslim population in general. By doing

so they thought they would safeguardHindus. Himanshu had thus decidedto take revenge by blasting bombs andkilling a minimum of 300-400 Mus-lims. They would be treated as hijras(transsexuals) if no retaliatory actionwere taken, he had said.

Sanjay said the bomb that was pre-pared and kept at Naresh’s residencewas to be blasted at the Aurangabadmasjid near the railway station on Idday in 2006. The plan to blast thebomb at Aurangabad was triggered bythe Varanasi blast (targeting theSankat Mochan temple in March 2006).Himanshu had said that he wouldcarry out his plan after he received anorder over the phone from a seniorleader. He said that he would not carry

out the plan until he received the order.Himanshu had a separate SIM card

for receiving these orders. Sanjay hadalso received a phone call where thecaller told him not to be afraid and that(if need be) he would get him releasedfrom jail at the earliest. He said thatthe caller was from the Bajrang Dal andhis name was Balaji Pakhare. He was aresident of Bajrang Nagar (Nanded).

(Narco analysis test conducted at theForensic Science Laboratory – FSL,

Bangalore, on June 22, 2006.)

Rahul Manoharao PandeRahul said that on the day of the

blast he was also present at Naresh’s(Rajkondwar’s) house. Regarding theprofession of Naresh and Himanshu, hesaid Naresh was a road contractor andHimanshu was working in a company.

Based on the ATS narco analysis reports

Nanded accused indict themselves


He was also an active member of theBajrang Dal, the RSS and the VHP.Himanshu was a good speaker and in-telligent. He (Rahul) said that on the dayof the blast he was drunk when he wentto Naresh’s house. There were five other(group) members in the house and theywere talking. Naresh asked him why hehad come to his house after drinking. Hesaid Naresh put a cigarette in his pocket.He also said that Himanshu was also an-gry with him for being drunk. He couldnot understand how the blast took place.He felt something hard had hit his headand he fell unconscious for a while andhe was told that there was only one bombthat had blasted at Naresh’s house.

Regarding the other five members whowere there at the house, he said thatHimanshu, Naresh, Guru, Maroti and Yogeshwere his friends. He said that after he re-gained consciousness he was afraid. Sohe ran away from that place to Pusad. Thedoctor at Pusad treated him for his frac-tured hand. When the doctor asked whathad happened he told a false story… neveruttered a word about the bomb blast.

He said that he had met Naresh twice inthe space of four months. Regarding prepa-ration of the bomb, he said that it was pre-pared by Himanshu. Regarding the leader ofthe gang, he said Himanshu was the leader.Regarding the blast at Jalna, Purna andParbhani (mosques), he said that all theblasts had been planned by Himanshu. Toaccomplish the task of bursting the bombat Jalna he had also accompanied Himanshu.

He said that some of the bomb mate-rials were kept in the gym. The materialsto prepare the bomb were brought byHimanshu from Pune. He said that Rahuland Guru were to help him to get thematerials. Regarding the financial sup-port for the tasks to be completed, hesaid that he was to help Himanshu, pay-ing him from the earnings from the gym.Guru also helped mobilise funds.

Regarding the preparation of the bombthat went off at Naresh’s residence, he saidthat Guru had collected around Rs 45-50,000 from people for the act. For theJalna blast also, Guru had helped finan-cially. Regarding the persons who helpedand supported Himanshu, he said there

were politicians who were there to sup-port him. Also, members of the RSS, VHPand Bajrang Dal were supportingHimanshu. Yogesh from Warad was one ofthe leaders who helped Himanshu. Theperson from Varanasi who helped him wasMukesh. The leader from Nanded who washelping Himanshu was Govind Puranik.Regarding the preparation of the bombs,he said that two persons had given train-ing to Himanshu. One of the persons henamed was Mithun Chakraborty from Pune.

Regarding the plan to blast, he told thatit was fixed on Gudi Padwa day. The bombthat blasted at Naresh’s house (Nanded)was planned for Id day and the target ofthe blast was a mosque in Aurangabad.

Mentioning Praveen Togadia, he saidthat he had come to their place onceto give a speech. Himanshu was the per-son who had made all the arrangementsfor Togadia’s visit. He said that Himanshuhad gone to Goa with Yogi in the monthof December for sightseeing.”

(Narco analysis test conducted at theForensic Science Laboratory – FSL,

Bangalore, on June 7, 2006.)

An accident too many

AROUND midnight on February9-10, 2007, Nanded town wasrocked by yet another acci-dental explosion, the secondin less than a year. This time

it was a bakery shop: Amol Biscuits. Twopersons were killed in the incident. Oneof them, Pandurang BhagwanAmilkanthwar, a former Shiv Sena shakhapramukh (branch leader) was apparentlyalso linked to the Bajrang Dal. His cousin,Dnyaneshwar Manikwar, also present onthe spot, sustained over 70 per centburn injuries. Initially admitted to aNanded hospital, Manikwar was inexpli-cably moved to the JJ Hospital in dis-tant Mumbai. He succumbed to the burninjuries a week after the incident.

The explosion bore a marked resem-blance to the earlier blast on April 6,2006 (see main story on Nanded blasts).There is a disquieting similarity between

the two incidents. Both were acciden-tal. Those present on the spot in bothincidents were Hindu extremists. And inboth cases the local police attempted acover-up.

The April 2006 incident was soughtto be explained away as an accidentalexplosion at a site where fireworks werestored. A similar cover-up was attemptedin the 2007 incident, with the localpolice initially registering a case of ac-cidental death and injury caused by afire due to an electrical short circuit.But a day later the critically injuredDnyaneshwar Manikwar told senior po-lice officials that in fact his deceasedcousin and he were trapped in a fire theyhad intentionally started using five li-tres of petrol, hoping to make false in-surance claims.

A three-member Concerned Citizen’sInquiry (CCI) team headed by a retired

judge, Justice Kolse Patil, and with thiscorrespondent as convener, visitedNanded for an on-the-spot inquiry onFebruary 17 and 18, 2007. During thevisit the team met the superintendentof police, Nanded district, FatehsinghPatil. In the presence of other seniorpolice officers, Patil stated clearly thatthough investigations were still on andthe police was open to receiving infor-mation from all quarters he was primafacie confident that this incident wasnothing like the earlier incident of April2006 and was simply a fire created toclaim insurance money. In a separate in-terview the inspector general of police(IGP), Nanded range, Dr SuryaprakashGupta, said the same thing. Accordingto the police, the fire story made moresense because a bomb blast would haveblown the deceased Pandurang to bits.It would not just leave his body badlycharred.

The team’s investigation howeverindicated that the facts on the groundsimply did not cohere with the theory


Occurring under similarly suspicious circumstances less than a year afterthe first incident, another blast in Nanded is similarly mishandled by thepolice and raises similar demands for a thorough investigation



the police seemed convinced about.Following its own field visit and inter-views with a cross-section of top dis-trict officials and local citizens, the CCIcommissioned a team of experts to visitthe site and give their findings on whatcould have caused such an explosion.The major findings of the CCI team, in-corporating the findings of the expertgroup, are as follows:

According to the policepanchnama, the injured person gavetwo statements to the police while inthe Nanded hospital. But the policepanchnama is silent on whether this se-verely injured person, who had a tra-cheotomy tube through histhroat, was in any position tospeak. Nor does thepanchnama mention whetherthe severely injured personwas conscious and had anytime or place orientation atthe time.

The explosion hurled thelarge metal shutter in the shopfront across the road to a dis-tance about 40 feet away. Win-dow frames were burnt andglasses cracked. Walls hadcracked and the site was incomplete disarray. Glass panesof the ventilators located notjust in the godown but inneighbouring rooms of thehouse owned by ShankarraoShivram Mangalikar, includingthe kitchen, sitting room andbedroom, had shattered. Therewere marks of some substanceson the kitchen floor.

A scooter parked on the road out-side the godown at a six-seven footdistance from it was completely charred.

Spot inspections by the CCI teamand photographic evidence showedthat the gas cylinder in the kitchenadjacent to the bakery shop re-mained completely unscathed. Thiswould be inexplicable in case of afire fuelled by five litres of petrol inthe adjacent room.

The godown had two woodendoors, one iron shutter, one windowand two ventilators. One door flew andlanded in the hall because of the ex-plosion. The ventilators did not haveany glass. One window was broken and

The team was also told by citizensrequesting anonymity that a police of-ficer from a neighbouring police sta-tion who is closely involved in the on-going investigation actually supervisedcritical evidentiary material being col-lected and spirited away from the spot.

Taking into consideration all thefactors mentioned above, the inferenceis that it was not a planned explosionbut an impact explosion created due tothe handling of large stocks of explosive/flammable materials stored here. The han-dling could have been for transporta-tion to another place.

The CCI’s preliminary findings were

made public through press conferencesorganised in Mumbai and in Delhi. Overthe next year four applications underthe Right to Information Act were filedwith the police for an update on theirinvestigations but no reply was forth-coming. In response to a complaint inthis regard filed by this correspondentin mid-June 2008, the MaharashtraState Human Rights Commission has is-sued a notice to the police. The hear-ing is scheduled for mid-September.

— TS

(A full report of the preliminary findingsof the Concerned Citizen’s Inquiry is

available atwww.sabrang.com/nanded/nanded.htm.)

burnt and had fallen out. Food items,plastic and organic materials used forpacking were still lying unburnt in thegodown when the team visited the spot10 days after the incident. If there wasa fire, as the police claimed there was,all these things would have been com-pletely burnt and the windows and ceil-ings of the rooms would have beenblackened and charred. The plaster onthe walls and ceilings displayed cracksindicative of shock and heat effect. Theindicators are that there was a dispro-portionate development of shock wavesbut correspondingly no burns. This sug-gests a blast, not a fire.

An explosion caused by some un-stable and liquid organic substancescannot be ruled out. According to theexpert group, such substances are highlyunstable, can generate a very high tem-perature, start a fierce chemical reac-tion resulting in an ignition, thenflames and thereafter an explosion. Theflames are at such high temperatures thata person can be burnt alive in five-10seconds. This is the most plausible causeof the explosion in the godown.

There was no explanation fromthe authorities for the existence ofnails and blades strewn in some quan-tity around the godown. These couldhave been used as pellets for the po-tential explosive.

Nanded, 2007


February 20, 2008: A bombis planted at the Cineraj cin-ema in Panvel town, about 50km from Mumbai, during ascreening of the film, JodhaAkbar . Fortunately, thebomb caused no more stirthan a small firecracker andwent unnoticed until theend of the show.

May 31 2008: The BombDetection and Disposal Squad(BDDS) from the police de-partment defuses a bombfound in a plastic carrier bagat an auditorium in Vashi, NaviMumbai. The bag containedbatteries, gelatine sticks, deto-nators and ammonium nitrate.Fortunately again, no damagewas done.

June 4, 2008: A bomb ex-p lodes in the Gadkar iRangayatan theatre inThane where a Marathi play, AmhiPachpute, was due to be staged. Sevenpersons are injured.

WHO was targeting cinemahalls and auditoriums onthe outskirts of Mumbaiwith such alarming fre-quency and why? The

ATS team of the Maharashtra policesuspected that Hindu extremist or-ganisations were behind the blasts,as some of these groups had beenprotesting against the film and theplay for weeks. Their grouse was thatHindu gods and goddesses were be-ing shown in a poor light and per-mission to stage such plays or filmsmust not be granted.

Working on their assumption, 16teams of the ATS checked the recordsof al l vehicles that entered thepremises of the Gadkari Rangayatantheatre on June 4. After cross-check-ing the list with the RTO the policepinpointed a motorcycle that was reg-istered in the name of a Hindu trust,the Guru Kripa Pratisthan. The policethen traced the organisation’s officeto Panvel where it is located in the

premises of another Hindu organisa-tion called the Sanatan Sanstha (SS).Set up in 1999, the SS, a revivalistgroup run by the Hindu JanajagrutiSamiti, has an ashram in Sukhapur vil-lage near Panvel.

By June 23, the ATS had arrested sixHindu extremists belonging to theSanatan Sanstha and the HinduJanajagruti Samiti (HJS). It later learntthat the two organisations wereclosely associated. The first two to benabbed – Hanumant Gadkari (50) andMangesh Dinkar Nikam (34) – be-longed both to the SS and the HJS.Two more sevaks (activists) of theSanatan Sanstha, Santosh Angre (26)and Vikram Bhave (26), allegedly partof the network that reportedly plantedthe bombs at the Bhave auditoriumin Vashi and Thane’s GadkariRangayatan, were the next to be ar-rested by the ATS. Unemployed, Angreand Bhave were full-time residents ofthe Sanatan Sanstha ashram.

On June 23, the Anti-Terrorism Squad(ATS) also arrested Dr Hemant Chalke, amember of Sanatan Sanstha, for con-ducting a recce of Vashi’s Bhave thea-tre where a bomb was found on May 31.

The ATS also seized 19 gelatinesticks, 20 detonators, two timers andthree circuits, which were dumped inthe Balganga river in Pen. The policealso seized six batteries, one timerand half a dozen detonators from theSatara residence of another accused,Mangesh Nikam.

“We are proud of what we did to de-ter those who were trying to show ourgods and goddesses in poor light,” theaccused reportedly told the investiga-tors. “We have extracted the names ofthe places from where the material usedin the bombs was bought by the ac-cused. We know where the circuit ma-terial, the ammonium nitrate and thetimer were bought. We also know theplace from where the soldering work wasdone for the bomb. In fact, the accusedhad availed of a 10 per cent discounton the timer,” said the ATS chief,Hemant Karkare.

The ATS is also examining therecords of those arrested for the Jalna,Purna and Parbhani mosque blasts tocheck if there was any connection be-tween the accused in the cases andwhether the SS and the HJS have anyorganisational links.

Sequel of terrorMAHARASHTRAMAHARASHTRAMAHARASHTRAMAHARASHTRAMAHARASHTRA

Thane, June 2008



According to information gatheredand made public by the ATS, in earlyJanuary this year activists of theSanatan Sanstha, which is known for theashrams it operates across the state,decided that to stop the ‘wrongful’ por-trayal of Hindu gods and goddesses theyneeded to send out a ‘loud’ message.They tried to put together a crude bombmade of gunpowder and attempted toset it off, using a fuse wire, at a cem-etery in Raigad district. The attemptfailed. Their choice of location for thetrial, a cemetery, is significant.

This was before they met Nikam, whoturned out to be theperfect complement toGadkari. Nikam’s past ex-perience and knowledgein the use of high in-tensity explosives likegelatine was comple-mented by Gadkari’sknowledge of electriccircuits (he was an elec-trician). Following somebasic research the groupassembled its first im-provised explosive de-vice (IED) containingtwo gelatine sticks, 300gm of ammonium ni-trate, detonators and abattery-powered electriccircuit as a triggermechanism. This was thedevice they exploded atthe Cineraj cinema inPanvel on February 20,without much success.

Three months later,according to the ATS,the group had upgradedits skills enough to as-semble a second, moresophisticated IED.Though similar in com-position to the earlierone, it was operated bya far more refined trig-ger mechanism – a dig-ital timer controlled bya remote control device.The group planted thisIED at Vashi’s VishnudasBhave Natyagruha where

the play, Amhi Pachpute, was beingstaged on May 31. But it was found anddefused before any damage was done.Gadkari and Nikam are held responsiblefor the three blasts between Februaryand June. Nikam was allegedly also in-volved in a February 2006 case in whicha bomb was planted outside the homeof a Catholic family in Ratnagiri.

The Sanatan Sanstha was quick todeny any organisational responsibilityor link to the blasts. At a press confer-ence held soon after the arrests boththe SS and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti,the latter claiming to be an ‘umbrella

organisation of many bodies’, said: “Wecannot deny their association with usbut we had nothing to do with the blast.Sanatan Sanstha will never support suchviolent acts,” said Abhay Vartak, the or-ganisation’s spokesperson. “Our protestshave always been peaceful, through dia-logue,” said Dr Uday Dhuri, coordinatorof HJS’ Mumbai chapter.

The SS also condemned the blastthrough an editorial in its SS newspa-per, Sanatan Prabhat, but with a rider:“Though we condemn the act, the mind-set and the anger of these (arrested)people should be understood and the

mocking of Hindugods should bestopped.”

The HJS, whose de-clared aim is “unitingHindus globally”, hasno headquarters orformal membership.But it has a strongonline presence. Itowes its genesis to anOctober 2002 meet-ing where Hindu dei-ties were “blasphe-mously criticised” andthe lone man who pro-tested was attacked.“With a view to pro-test against this at-tack, all Hindu or-ganisations came to-gether and the HinduJanajagruti Samitiwas established onOctober 13, 2002 [atthe] initiative ofseekers of SanatanSanstha,” says theoutfit’s website. Cur-rently, the group’sglobal agenda is toprotest against the“anti-Hindu” Holly-wood movie, The LoveGuru, and “anti-Hindu textbooks” forschoolchildren inGoa, and to save theRam Sethu.

Media investiga-tions and reports of

‘Our investigation is raising serious questions’

Hemant Karkare, head of the Anti-Terrorism Squad, Maharashtra,told the media soon after Gadkari and Nikam had been interrogatedby the ATS that the bombings were “definitely terrorist acts as theywere carried out by people motivated by an ideology”. He addedthat if the organisations to which the men belonged were found tobe involved in the planning or the execution of these incidents,the ATS would “certainly write to the centre and seek that they bebanned”. CC spoke to Karkare in the second week of August on theprogress of investigations. Excerpts from the interview:

Q: What stage have the investigations into the Thane-Panvel-Vashi blasts reached?

A: We are on the verge of filing the charge sheets, which we willaccomplish within the legally stipulated 60 days’ time.

Q: Can we expect some major breakthroughs?A: Some recovery of material is pending. Also, on the basis of

the investigations and confessional statements we are still inquir-ing into the persons who gave shelter to the accused, those whobought the materials that went into making the explosives, etc,the organisational links.

Q: Have any organisational links been established?A: Our investigation is raising serious questions. The organisa-

tions, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, the Dharmakranti Sena andthe Sanatan Sanstha, all have full-timers. Then there is also theGuru Kripa Pratisthan. The SS ashram is large, can house a hun-dred people, ostensibly learning yoga… The question our investi-gation is asking is can we charge sheet these organisations? Werethese acts furthering the objectives of these organisations? Theyare all trusts with the charity commissioner. We are investigatingthe sources of their funding with the charity commissioner. Arethere common sources of funding, etc? Can they be linked to theacquisition of violent substances?

The Sanatan Sanstha also publishes a regular newspaper, theSanatan Prabhat, from four centres – Ponda (Goa), Navi Mumbai,Indore or Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh and North Karnataka.


a sinister network ofhard line Hindu outfitsacross Maharashtra andGoa pose a particularchallenge to investiga-tion and intelligenceagencies. According toa report in The IndianExpress (June 22):

“The five men weremembers of theSanatan Sanstha (SS)and the HinduJanajagruti Samiti(HJS), hitherto little-known groups operat-ing in the hinterland ofMaharashtra and Goa.Two of them are alsomembers of anothernewly launched outfitcalled the DharmashaktiSena, pictures of whoseinaugural rally in Aprilshow young mendressed in military fa-tigues.

“These groups, whichwork like wheels withinwheels, have been qui-etly mobilising Hinduson a cocktail ofRamrajya (Rama’s rule),Hindu dharma and‘dharmakranti’ (religiousrevolution) in andaround Mumbai for a fewyears now.

“While the SS and theHJS are both registeredin Goa as charitable organisations, theDharmashakti Sena was set up in 16Maharashtra towns and cities on GudiPadwa day this April. Its stated aim: es-tablishing ‘Ramrajya’ and to make Hin-dus ‘capable of action’.

“Publications linked to the threegroups say the Dharmashakti Sena of-fers free training in self-defence and thetraining involves inculcating ‘mentalcourage’. It also reminds readers of the‘armed battle of revolutionaries andsaints’, RSS guru Golwalkar’s work on‘protecting Hindus’ and his teachingthat ‘weapons should be countered withweapons’.

“‘Conversions of Hindus’, ‘geno-cide’, the Congress government’s al-leged poor track record against Is-lamic terrorism, ‘persecution at thehands of anti-Hindus’, are recurrentthemes alongside a call for Hindus andHindu organisations to unite. Unlikeleaders of the RSS, VHP and BajrangDal, the men and women behind thesenew outfits are low-profile activistswho have been quietly chipping awayat the mind-set of Hindus inMaharashtra and Goa. The founder ofthe SS, the oldest of the three groups,is Dr Jayant Athavale, a clinicalhypnotherapist who practised for two


decades and also set upthe Indian Society ofClinical Hypnosis andResearch. A former resi-dent of Goa, DrAthavale is now a resi-dent of New Bombay.His students are quickto exonerate his rolein present activities,however.

“HJS and SS leadersare also cagey talkingabout DharmashaktiSena chief VinayPanvalkar, thought tolive in the Dadar area ofCentral Mumbai and whohas travelled extensivelyacross Maharashtra afterthe outf i t waslaunched. At a‘dharmajagruti sabha’ (re-ligious awakening con-ference) in Pune in mid-May 2008, Panvalkar isquoted as saying: “Hin-dus are cornered fromall sides but there is noretaliation from them.”At a later meeting inThane he said, “The warin future wi l l be adharmayudh (religiouswar) and DharmashaktiSena will be the guid-ing force.”

The Indian Express in-vestigation shows thatthe linkages to these

groups from Maharashtra and Goa go allthe way to Australia and the UnitedStates with centres in New Jersey, Bris-bane, Melbourne and Dubai.

The top leaders of these organi-sat ions a re : D r Jayant Ba la j iAthava le , founder o f H induJana jagrut i Samit i , V i rendraMarathe , managing t rus tee o fSanatan Sanstha, Vinay Panvalkar,chief of Dharmashakti Sena, DrDurgesh Samant, national spokes-man of HJS, Abhay Vartak, Mumbaispokesman of Sanatan Sanstha,and Shivaji Vatkar, Mumbai con-venor of HJS.

Thackeray: Hindu suicide squads neededA Hindu fidayeen band is necessary to combat Muslim

fundamentalism, Shiv Sena mouthpiece, Saamna, edited by partyboss Bal Thackeray, said on June 19.

In a leader comment, the paper said a “Hindu bomb” wasneeded to combat the “Muslim bomb”, in response to the arrestof those allegedly involved in the bomb blasts in Vashi and Thane.

“Think big”, advised the editorial, describing the low intensitybombs as “phuskya” (timid”) and targeting of fellow Hindus bythe extremists as “ridiculous and stupid”.

“The need of the hour is to plant a strong bomb in Bangladeshibastis that have mushroomed in Thane and elsewhere inMaharashtra,” it added.

Responding to the outrage over the Saamna editorial,Thackeray convened a press conference two days later toreiterate his appeal to militant Hindus to form suicide squadsto counter Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. He said that he wasnot worried about the legal implications of his appeal.

BJP vice–president Gopinath Munde said no case could bemade against Thackeray since the Sena chief had spoken againstterrorism and not against any section of the population. WhatThackeray preached was nothing but pure patriotism, he added.

Thane, June 2008



July 26, 2008: Seventeen low intensity bombs explode in sev-eral areas of Ahmedabad, leaving 58 people dead and over 100others injured.

July 25, 2008: A string of nine synchronised bomb blasts during thebusy lunch hour in Bangalore leave two dead and injure 12 others.

May 13, 2008: Eight bomb blasts in the span of 12 minutes rockJaipur, leaving 67 dead and over 277 others injured.

January 1, 2008: A pre-dawn terrorist attack on a Central Re-serve Police Force camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, kills eight,including seven security men, and injures five others.

October 11, 2007: A bomb blast during the month of Ramadan at theKhwaja Moinuddin Chishti dargah in Ajmer kills two and injures 17.

August 25, 2007: Twin bomb blasts, at an open-air auditorium anda popular eatery in Hyderabad, leave 42 dead and injure 50 others.

May 18, 2007: A bomb blast at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad kills11 people and injures 50 others. Five people are also killed in subse-quent police firing.

February 18, 2007: Two fire bombs explode on the SamjhautaExpress bound for Pakistan, killing 68 passengers, most of themPakistanis, and injuring 50 others.

September 8, 2006: Twin bomb blasts go off after Friday prayersnear a mosque in Malegaon, Maharashtra, killing 40 people andinjuring 125 others.

July 11, 2006: Seven bomb explosions rip through crowdedcommuter trains and stations in Mumbai, killing 200 people andleaving about 700 others injured.

July 11, 2006: Five hand grenade attacks in Srinagar kill eightpeople, including tourists and pilgrims, and injure 43 others.

June 1, 2006: Three militants are killed in an exchange of firewith security personnel during an attempted attack on the RSSheadquarters in Nagpur.

May 25, 2006: A powerful bomb explosion kills four tourists inBatpora, Srinagar.

May 21, 2006: Seven people, including two terrorists, are killedas militants attack a Congress party rally in Srinagar.

May 1, 2006: Thirty-five Hindu villagers are killed in two sepa-rate terrorist attacks in the districts of Doda and Udhampur inJammu and Kashmir.

April 14, 2006: Two explosions rip through the Jama Masjid inDelhi, injuring 14 people.

March 7, 2006: Twin bombings at the Sankat Mochan templeand at the Cantonment railway station in Varanasi kill 23 peopleand injure over 100 others.

December 28, 2005: One person is killed and five others areinjured when a heavily armed assailant opens fire and lobs gre-nades on the Indian Institute of Science campus in Bangalore.

October 29, 2005: Three bombs explode in busy New Delhi marketsa day before Diwali, killing 65 people and injuring 210 others.

October 18, 2005: Jammu and Kashmir minister of state foreducation, Ghulam Nabi Lone, is shot dead by a militant whileCPI(M) state secretary, MY Tarigami, escapes unhurt during a simi-lar bid in Srinagar. Two security guards and a civilian are alsokilled in the incidents.

July 29, 2005: Twelve people are killed and 52 others injured ina bomb explosion on the Shramjivi Express in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh.

July 5, 2005: Six militants are killed during an attempt to stormthe makeshift Ram temple in Ayodhya. Two civilians are also killedand three security men are injured in the attack.

May 9, 2005: Three people are killed as terrorists open fire onpeople coming out of a mosque at Chakka village in the Bhaderwaharea of Doda district, Jammu and Kashmir.

August 27, 2004: Bomb blasts at local mosques in the towns ofPurna and Jalna in Central Maharashtra injure 18 persons.

August 15, 2004: Three bomb explosions in the Dhemaji district ofAssam kill 16 people, mainly schoolchildren, and injure 40 others.

November 21, 2003: A bomb blast at the Mohammadiya Masjid inParbhani in Central Maharashtra kills one person and injures 40 others.

August 25, 2003: Two powerful car bomb explosions at Jhaveri Ba-zaar and at the Gateway of India in South Mumbai kill 60 persons andinjure about 160 others.

July 28, 2003: A bomb explosion on a BEST bus at Ghatkopar innorth-eastern Mumbai kills four people and injures 32 others.

March 13, 2003: A bomb blast shatters the bogie of a local trainat the Mulund railway station in Mumbai, killing 11 people and injur-ing more than 65 others.

December 2, 2002: Two persons are killed and 31 others injured in abomb explosion in a bus outside the Ghatkopar railway station in Mumbai.

September 24, 2002: Armed terrorists attack the Akhshardhamtemple in Gandhinagar, killing 39 people and injuring 74 others.

May 21, 2002: Abdul Gani Lone, senior leader of the separatistAll Parties Hurriyat Conference, is shot dead by unidentified gun-men in Srinagar.

May 14, 2002: At least 30 people, including women and chil-dren, are killed and over 60 injured in a militant suicide attack onan army camp in the Kaluchak cantonment area in Jammu.

March 30, 2002: Seven people, including three security forcesmen, are killed in a militant attack on the Raghunath temple in Jammu.

January 22, 2002: Militants attack the American Centre inKolkata, killing four police officers and injuring 21.

December 13, 2001: Armed terrorists attack the Indian Parlia-ment in New Delhi, killing 12 people, including six policemen, andinjuring 26 others. All five terrorists are also killed.

October 1, 2001: A car bomb explodes near the Jammu andKashmir state assembly in Srinagar, killing 38 people and injuring40 others. The bombing was followed by an armed assault on theassembly premises by three armed terrorists.

June 8, 2001: Unidentified terrorists lob a grenade into thepremises of the Charar-e-Sharif mosque near Srinagar. Four per-sons are killed and 60 others are injured in the incident.

December 22, 2000: Militants attack the Red Fort in Delhi, kill-ing two army men and one civilian.

March 20, 2000: Militants massacre 35 Sikhs in the village ofChattisinghpora in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir.

December 24-31, 1999: An Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu toNew Delhi is hijacked and flown to Afghanistan where 189 passengersand crew are held hostage for eight days. They are ultimately freed inreturn for the release of three militants held in Indian prisons. Onehostage is killed.

February 14, 1998: Forty-six persons are killed and more than 200injured as 13 bomb blasts rip through Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.

Major terrorist attacks in India over the past decade

Bloodstains


GUJARAGUJARAGUJARAGUJARAGUJARATTTTT

BY TEESTA SETALVAD

R EPEATED terror attacks areinvariably followed by nearinstantaneous polarisation inour public sphere – in class-rooms and mohallas, in buses

and train compartments and in our news-rooms. A polarisation that echoes theHindu vs Muslim divide, carefully fo-mented by ideological processes thatthreaten at heart the survival of Indiaas a society and as a nation.

Rational discourse barely gets anedge in as hate hysteria claims our psy-che. Peace, reason, dialogue all seempassé as intelligence experts bay forblood and press for a tighter securityregime. Overnight the police, intelli-gence and other investigating agen-cies – which have been repeatedlyhauled over the coals for their failures,rank complicity and unprofessionalconduct – emerge unscathed as our pro-tectors in times of terror.

The most recent example of this is incase of the Ahmedabad blasts on July26 when miraculously, within 21 daysof the tragic event, we have a complete

solution to the case presented to us bythe Gujarat police.

Ironically, both men at the helm inGujarat, the state’s chief minister,Narendra Modi, and the director gen-eral of police (DGP), PC Pande, standseriously indicted for criminal con-spiracy and mass murder of the state’s2,500 Muslims in 2002. A significantsection of the Gujarat police, especiallyits crime branch, has been found guiltyof unprofessional and criminal conductvis-à-vis the state’s minorities. Unfor-tunately, such discriminatory policingenjoys highest political sanction inGujarat.

The swift solution presented to thepublic by the Gujarat police on August16, 2008 contains several loopholes thatrequire explanation. We also need to ques-tion the ethics of entrusting such a sen-sitive investigation of bomb terror to apolice force and an administration thatstands severely tainted by the carnageof 2002. Or are such elementary ques-tions prohibited in today’s India?

To begin with however we take a lookat the investigations into theAhmedabad bomb blasts of July 26,

2008. Fifty-six people were killed andover 150 injured in the serial blasts thathit Gujarat’s major commercial nervecentre last month. A total of 19 blaststook place in 10 different areas of thecity and apart from the minority-domi-nated Sarkhej and Juhapura all of themoccurred in the labour-dominated east-ern parts of the old city. Most of thesewere crowded and congested areas bat-tling peak evening hour traffic: Sarkhej,Maninagar, Bapunagar,Thakkarbapanagar, Naroda, Raipur, Naroland Sarangpur. The Civil Hospital andLG Hospital campuses were the last tobe hit, about 40 minutes after the firstround of blasts, and 27 people werekilled here.

At a press conference held at thepolice commissioner’s office late thatsame evening the chief minister,Narendra Modi said confidently thatammonium nitrate and gelatine stickshad been used in the bombs. He alsosaid that the Ahmedabad Crime Branchwould be handling the investigation.Intelligence sources said the needle ofsuspicion pointed to the Students Is-lamic Movement of India (SIMI) and theLashkar-i Tayyeba.

A. Outfits named: In Ahmedabad, aselsewhere, the moment the bombs ex-ploded both the political class and “in-telligence sources” held SIMI andLashkar responsible for the attacks evenas they admitted their ignorance abouthow these outfits operate.

B. Arrests of the alleged accused: ByAugust 16, 2008, when the Gujarat po-lice claimed they had ‘cracked’ the case,10 persons in all, nine of them Gujaratresidents, had been arrested. Mufti AbuBashar from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradeshwas named as the mastermind.

Abdul Halim, an alleged activist ofthe banned SIMI who the police claimedwas wanted in the 2002 Gujarat riots(we are not told for what offence), wasarrested in Ahmedabad (Deccan Herald,July 27, 2008). The police claimed thathe had been in hiding since 2002.Whatis the actual evidence of Halim’s involve-ment? Reports suggest that far from

The so-called breakthrough in the Ahmedabad blasts caseraises more questions than it answers

Gujarat blasts: Case closed?

Ahmedabad, July 2008



absconding, Halim was an active com-munity leader in Dani Limda and policeclaims that he had been absconding wereuntrue.

Media reports quoting authoritiesstated that Abdul Halim allegedly toldthe Crime Branch that he was associ-ated with Syed Abdul Karim ‘Tunda’, thetop Lashkar-i Tayyeba operative wantedin connection with several blasts in thecountry between 1993 and 1998 (DNA,August 1, 2008).

The Gujarat police must also explainthe prompt arrest of Sajid Mansuri, whowe are told was the link between theplanners and executors of the blasts.The police said he had been on the runfor over seven months. How was Mansurisuddenly located and conveniently ar-rested 20 days after the Ahmedabadblasts? (DNA, August 17, 2008).

When was this information, which isnow being offered so readily by the au-thorities, actually collected? We are talk-ing here of 15 and 12 year-old facts, sowhat were the authorities doing withthis knowledge until now? Incidentally,Halim’s family has denied all the ‘facts’obtained by the Crime Branch allegedlyunder torture.

On August 18, 2008 The Times of Indiareported on the arrests of an alleged ISIagent, Vishal Upadhaya of Jharkhand,an engineering student, in 2007 andof a former jawan, Shailesh Jadhav ofSatara, who was arrested in Pune in2008 for his alleged links with the ISI.Has there been any follow-up of thesearrests, any further investigations?

The facts surrounding the arrest, bythe Crime Branch, of another allegedaccused, Zahid Shaikh, are also underserious dispute. Ahmedabad city Detec-tion of Crime Branch (DCB) officials claimthat Zahid attended two terror trainingcamps in Kerala and Gujarat and the twomasterminds of the Ahmedabad blasts,Mufti Abu Bashar and Abdul SubbanQureshi alias Tauqir, were constantly intouch with him. Zahid, a resident ofGujarat, owned a mobile (repair) shopat the Alishan Complex in Dani Limdaand lived, along with several membersof his family, not far from the Sarkhejhighway. Zahid’s sister, Saleha, refutedthe charges levelled against him. “They(the DCB) say Zahid had gone to vari-ous places for training and had arranged

for vehicles used in the blasts. But hehas not left home for the past fivemonths. They also said some meetingswere held at our house but we are notaware of any such meeting,” she said(The Indian Express, August 18, 2008).

C. Substances Used: On the very daythe blasts occurred Narendra Modi as-serted that ammonium nitrate and gela-tine sticks were used in the bombs, alsostating that the Ahmedabad CrimeBranch would be handling the case (DNA,July 27, 2008). An obvious part of theinvestigation ought to have been prob-ing the leakage of these volatile sub-stances right from the production stageup to retail sale to the end user (in thiscase the terrorists).

The chain begins with industrial pro-ducers who are given special licencesto manufacture hazardous substances ofthis nature. Investigations could pos-sibly reveal clandestine sales by produc-ers. Next in line are the retailers, alsolicensed, who are supposed to maintaina proper stock register precisely because

of the potential hazards of the materi-als they deal in. Here too underhandsales are possible. Investigators shouldhave examined and tallied all the rel-evant records to determine if any quan-tity of these substances was not legallyaccounted for at either stage.

Nothing in the Gujarat police ‘break-through’ makes any mention of any in-vestigation into these leaks.

According to DCB officials, LPG cyl-inders, each of a five-litre capacity, wereused in the blasts at the LG and Civilhospitals. The cylinders were found tohave been manufactured at Meerut inUP while their distributors were tracedto Kalupur in Ahmedabad. The DCBnamed at least two manufacturingagencies from Meerut, Mayur andGolden Click, who are said to have sentthe cylinders to Ahmedabad. TheKalupur distributor was reportedly de-tained for questioning (The Indian Ex-press, August 4, 2008).

CC: How did the Crime Branch con-clude that the source of the cylindersused was/is a Kalupur distributor? Docylinders have any identification marksor serial numbers?

D. How were detonators leaked frommanufacturers?: According to initialmedia reports, the detonators used bothin the blasts at Ahmedabad and in theunexploded bombs in Surat, accordingto markings recovered from the sites,were manufactured by AP Explosives (P)Ltd, a company based at Bommalramaramvillage and Mandal in the Nalgonda dis-trict of Andhra Pradesh, about 170 kmfrom Hyderabad. AP Explosives makesdetonators and detonating fuses. (TheIndian Express, July 30, 2008). Nothingin the announced ‘breakthrough’ of theGujarat police indicates how the deto-nators had been accessed from AP bythe terrorists or what these linkagesmean in terms of the network of terror.

Another report two days later saidthat an explosives-manufacturing com-pany in Rajasthan, in which the state

government has a major stake, may havebeen the source of the detonators inthe 27 bombs defused by police in Surat(The Times of India, August 2, 2008).The detonators found in the unexplodedSurat bombs were said to have origi-nated from the Dholpur-based RajasthanExplosives and Chemicals Ltd (RECL).

A joint sector company in associa-tion with RIICO, a Rajasthan governmentundertaking, RECL makes more than 25lakh detonators every month. Integratedcircuit detonators, such as the onesused in Surat, are supplied to mines totrigger explosions mainly for stone quar-rying and coal mining. Investigators saythe terror outfits may have procuredthese detonators from mining compa-nies who engage a large number of con-tractors, especially in stone quarryingwhich is big business in Rajasthan.

RECL had reportedly already given theGujarat police a list of all those who

In Ahmedabad, as elsewhere, the moment theIn Ahmedabad, as elsewhere, the moment theIn Ahmedabad, as elsewhere, the moment theIn Ahmedabad, as elsewhere, the moment theIn Ahmedabad, as elsewhere, the moment thebombs exploded both the political class andbombs exploded both the political class andbombs exploded both the political class andbombs exploded both the political class andbombs exploded both the political class and“intelligence sources” held SIMI and Lashkar“intelligence sources” held SIMI and Lashkar“intelligence sources” held SIMI and Lashkar“intelligence sources” held SIMI and Lashkar“intelligence sources” held SIMI and Lashkarresponsible for the attacks even as they admittedresponsible for the attacks even as they admittedresponsible for the attacks even as they admittedresponsible for the attacks even as they admittedresponsible for the attacks even as they admittedtheir ignorance about how these outfits operatetheir ignorance about how these outfits operatetheir ignorance about how these outfits operatetheir ignorance about how these outfits operatetheir ignorance about how these outfits operate



had bought detonators from them. Thesuperintendent of police, Dholpur,Gaurav Srivastava said that batch num-bers of product consignments wouldhelp identify the dealer from whom thedetonators then went to the terror out-fits. “As many as 1,500 detonators areusually packed in a single carton onwhich the batch number is properly writ-ten. The manufacturing companiesmaintain a record of the batch numbersof cartons supplied to the dealers.”

RECL’s senior manager (works), K.Edward Kelly said there are more than80 approved dealers who sell the deto-nators to firms involved in mining ac-tivity. “Detonators are transported intrucks and are sold through registereddealers. The records are properly docu-

mented. The ultimate delivery is the pre-rogative of the dealers and we have nocontrol over it,” said Kelly. He also saidhowever that his company does takemeasures to prevent the detonatorsreaching the wrong hands. Most of thecompany’s dealers are in Andhra Pradesh.RECL detonators are supplied to stateslike Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam andRajasthan.

This is not the first time that terror-ists have used RECL detonators. Policefound that they had been used in someof the serial blasts that rockedCoimbatore in 1998 when about 46 peo-ple were killed and more than 200 in-jured in 13 explosions. In another in-

cident, 1,500 detonators from RECL wererecovered from a man in the Hazaribaghdistrict of Jharkhand in August 2005.He was said to be a supplier of arms toMaoists in Jharkhand (The Times of In-dia, August 2, 2008).

Forensic investigators have con-cluded that the improvised explosivedevices (IEDs) used in July’s serialbombings in Gujarat were assembled bythe same bomb-makers responsible fora string of earlier attacks in AP, UP andRajasthan. Experts from the Gujarat po-lice and the National Bomb Data Centrehave determined that the IEDs deployedin Ahmedabad and Surat were identicalin their design to the devices used inthe May 2008 serial bombings in Jaipur;the November 2007 attacks on trial

court buildings in Lucknow, Varanasiand Faizabad; the August 2007 bomb-ings at the Gokul Chat Bhandar inHyderabad; and the March 2006 attackon the Sankat Mochan temple inVaranasi (The Hindu, August 7, 2008).

Twenty days later we are told at thepress conference announcing the“breakthrough” that the “material for theexplosions was brought from MadhyaPradesh and assembled in Ahmedabadand Vadodara”.

CC: Have the AP and Rajasthan leadsfallen by the wayside?

Were any follow-up investigationscarried out to probe the Rajasthan con-nection? Why were they dropped? Why

are the Rajasthan and Gujarat policequiet now on the supply of detonatorsfrom AP and Rajasthan? Are the 1,500detonators within each carton properly/serially numbered? If that is the case itshould be very easy to trace the sourceof the leakage which would then leadto the network involved in the terrorattack and its modus operandi.

Did the investigations in the earlierblasts also reveal a common pattern?Were the detonators used in those ex-plosions also manufactured in theRajasthan and AP factories?

E. The vehicle trail: A ‘failed plan’ toexplode over a dozen bombs in Suratput investigators on an interstate trailof vehicles suspected to have been used

in the Ahmedabad explosions. TheSurat police seized two cars con-taining RDX and detonatorspacked in separate bags. Thebombs were yet to be assembled.The seized vehicles, it was claimed,bore fake numbers from Vadodarabut their authentic registrationhad been traced to Navi Mumbaiin Maharashtra. Both vehicles wereCNG-run WagonR cars.

A connection between Surat,Ahmedabad and Navi Mumbai wasfound. It was a CNG-run WagonRthat was reduced to mangled steeloutside the Civil Hospital. The carseized by the Surat police, whichcontained a can of RDX, was alsoa CNG-run WagonR. The car hasenough boot space to carry gascylinders similar to those found atthe Civil Hospital (The Telegraph,

July 28, 2008).The Maharashtra ATS says that it has

detained car thieves from Navi Mumbaiand Thane but is cagey on all other de-tails (The Times of India, August 18,2008).

CC: Since vehicles have been seized,why has the vehicle trail been dropped?(The culprits of the 1993 Bombay blastswere traced through vehicle numbers andregistrations.) Why are the Gujarat andMaharashtra police suddenly silent onthis? The Surat vehicles bear Vadodaranumber plates yet their registration hasbeen traced to Maharashtra; both the ATSMaharashtra and the Gujarat police arereluctant to release any details about thevehicles’ registration.

Disposable squad?



F. Missing CCTV records: On August 1,2008 newspaper reports revealed thatvital CCTV data which could have pro-vided useful clues to the identity ofthose involved in the Ahmedabad ter-ror attacks was missing or tampered with.The ATS’s great hope of putting a faceto the Ahmedabad blasts had beendashed said the reports. The hard diskof CCTV footage that it had seized fromthe Talasari toll naka (check post) was‘corrupted’ and did not contain anyfootage of the suspected terroristscrossing the naka in the cars stolen fromNavi Mumbai.

The ATS had seized the hard diskafter it received specific informationthat the suspected terrorists had sto-len four cars from Navi Mumbai andcrossed the Talasari toll naka whilefleeing to Gujarat where explosiveswere then planted in these cars. Sincethe Talasari toll naka has an elaboratenetwork of CCTV cameras which notonly record the registration numberof the vehicles crossing the naka buteven take pictures of the driver, theATS had hoped it could finally put aface to the men behind the terror at-tacks. The Thane police told the me-dia that a few weeks earlier they hadbeen informed by toll naka officialsthat the CCTV apparatus was malfunc-tioning. As the entire apparatus wasinstalled and maintained by a privatefirm it took some time for the policeto fix the problem. Police say it ispossible that the cars crossed the nakaduring this time

(Mumbai Mirror and The Times of In-dia, Pune).

CC: From reports appearing in sec-tions of the media it appears that CCTVdata at the Talasari toll collection cen-tre were either missing for those crucialdates or tampered with. It is now up tothe investigating agencies to verifywhether there was in fact some defectin the CCTV or the data was intention-ally tampered with. None of this infor-mation was made public at the ‘break-through’ press conference.

If the CCTVs were malfunctioning,and this had been reported to the au-thorities, how often has such malfunc-tioning been reported before this? Whowas the person on duty for the relevantdates, operating the CCTV or manning

the Talasari toll naka? Who monitors thefunctioning of toll nakas? Serious ques-tions need to be asked of whicheveragency controls the entire toll collec-tion operation, state or private.

G. Terror threat email: In a 14-pagemanifesto emailed to the media min-utes before the serial bombings, an or-ganisation calling itself the “IndianMujahideen” claimed responsibility forthe Ahmedabad attacks. Titled “The Riseof Jihad”, the manifesto said the bomb-ings were carried out to avenge the2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat.“In the light of the injustice andwrongs on the Muslims of Gujarat,” itsaid, “we advance our jihad and call allour brethren under it to unite and an-swer these irresolute kafireen (infidels)of India” (The Hindu, July 27, 2008).The email from the Indian Mujahideen,which reached the media five minutesbefore the first bomb went off in

Ahmedabad, was sent from the Yahoomail account of “alarabi-gujarat”through an internet connection usedin the name of Camp Kell White. TheInternet Protocol (IP) address wastraced to a Kenneth Haywood, livingin Navi Mumbai.

As we go to press, Haywood has beenallowed to flee India despite a ‘lookoutnotice’ against him, which means thathis name is intimated to all airports andborder checkpoints. Immigration at air-ports falls under the jurisdiction of cen-tral intelligence while airports fall underthe purview of the ministry of home af-fairs (MHA).

CC: Was the Indian Mujahideen anorganisation known to the IntelligenceBureau (IB) before the recent spate ofbombings? (At his August 16 press con-ference DGP Pande said that SIMI mi-nus the S and I equalled IM – IndianMujahideen.) Was this organisationlinked to any known terrorist/extremist

groups, their activities and their terrorattacks?

What are the antecedents of KennethHaywood? Who within the central IB andthe MHA were responsible for lettingHaywood leave the country?

H. Other email threats: An account-ant, Deepak Shivshankar Pandey, wasarrested by Mumbai Crime Branch offi-cials on July 31, 2008 for allegedly send-ing an email to a news channel in whichhe threatened more blasts. ThoughPandey hailed from Mumbai, he was ar-rested in Ludhiana. The police said theemail was traced back to the Punjab cityfrom where he was then arrested (TheAsian Age, August 1, 2008). Accordingto Pudhari, a prominent Marathi dailypublished from Pune, Pandey is a com-mitted activist and member of the RSS.Pudhari also reported on August 4 thatPandey had earlier been arrested forsending emails to the Maharashtra chief

minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, and deputychief minister, RR Patil, threatening toblow up religious places.

CC: Is there a link between this ar-rest and the other terror emails?

I. Farce of the Surat bombs: All theconfidence exuded by DGP Pande as hetalked of how police had solved theAhmedabad serial blasts and the arrestof 10 SIMI activists as prime suspectsfizzled out when media persons quizzedhim about the Surat bombs and why theynever went off (DNA, August 16, 2008).Pande was unable to answer whether thebombs were planned before or after theAhmedabad blasts.

In another strange twist to the caseof mysterious live bombs found anddefused in Surat over several days thelocal police revealed that the Suratbombs were actually planted hours be-fore the Ahmedabad serial bomb blaststook place. Surat police commissioner

Was the Indian Mujahideen an organisation known toWas the Indian Mujahideen an organisation known toWas the Indian Mujahideen an organisation known toWas the Indian Mujahideen an organisation known toWas the Indian Mujahideen an organisation known tothe Intelligence Bureau before the recent spate ofthe Intelligence Bureau before the recent spate ofthe Intelligence Bureau before the recent spate ofthe Intelligence Bureau before the recent spate ofthe Intelligence Bureau before the recent spate ofbombings? Was this organisation linked to any knownbombings? Was this organisation linked to any knownbombings? Was this organisation linked to any knownbombings? Was this organisation linked to any knownbombings? Was this organisation linked to any knownterrorist/extremist groups, their activities and theirterrorist/extremist groups, their activities and theirterrorist/extremist groups, their activities and theirterrorist/extremist groups, their activities and theirterrorist/extremist groups, their activities and theirterror attacks? What are the antecedents of Kennethterror attacks? What are the antecedents of Kennethterror attacks? What are the antecedents of Kennethterror attacks? What are the antecedents of Kennethterror attacks? What are the antecedents of KennethHaywood? Who within the central IB and the MHA wereHaywood? Who within the central IB and the MHA wereHaywood? Who within the central IB and the MHA wereHaywood? Who within the central IB and the MHA wereHaywood? Who within the central IB and the MHA wereresponsible for letting Haywood leave the country?responsible for letting Haywood leave the country?responsible for letting Haywood leave the country?responsible for letting Haywood leave the country?responsible for letting Haywood leave the country?



(CP) RMS Brar categorically confirmedthat a citizen who had spotted thebombs and informed the police saidthat he first spotted the bomb at 11a.m. on Saturday, July 26. (The AsianAge, August 1, 2008). The first bombblast in Ahmedabad took place ataround 6.45 p.m. i.e. nearly eighthours later.

The Surat CP concluded from thisthat the Surat bombs were planted be-fore the Ahmedabad serial blasts andthat if they had actually exploded theywould have caused much more havocthan all the Ahmedabad bombs put to-gether. He also said that fortunatelynone of the Surat bombs had timersand the live bombs had all been de-

fused by the local bomb disposal squadbefore they exploded.

On July 29, a bomb was recoveredfrom a treetop at Mini Hira Bazaar inVarachha.

On July 29, a bomb was recoveredfrom a flyover at Hira Baug Circle inVarachha and later defused.

On July 29, a live bomb was re-covered from a treetop near MohanChawl in Varachha whereas another bombwas recovered from an advertising ban-ner stuck on the Flyover Bridge.

On July 30, a live bomb wasrecovered from where it was hangingatop a tree near the Surat MunicipalCorporat ion swimming pool inKapdoara.

On July 30, a live bomb was foundhidden near a signboard at MahidharpuraHira Bazaar.

On August 3, a live bomb was re-covered from a billboard at a bus stopin the Athwalines area (The Times ofIndia, August 19, 2008).

CC: How can the Surat police confi-dently assert – five days after theAhmedabad blasts – that they have sub-sequently defused bombs in Surat thatwere actually meant for explosion be-fore the Ahmedabad blasts?

VM Parghi, an officer of the Gujaratpolice who was seriously indicted by thecourts for perjury in the Best Bakery case(see CC, March 2006), is the man fromthe Gujarat (Surat) police who has been

investigating the Surat bombs. Can thisinvestigation have credibility?

The fact that the Surat bombs were de-fused in such a cavalier manner alsoprompted a section of the media to raisequestions about the nature of these bombs.

J. Alleged phone calls to Pakistan:Police sources said that a life convictin a Sabarmati jail, said to be close toPakistan-based fugitive Rasool Parti,would be interrogated in connectionwith the blasts. They said grilling GulamMohammed, jailed under the Preventionof Terrorism Act (POTA) in connectionwith the murder of Congress leader RaufValiullah (1991), could help them tracethe link to Pakistan where they believethe blast conspiracy was hatched. Five

months ago the Crime Branch report-edly discovered that Mohammed wasmaking phone calls from the jail to Pa-kistan and Dubai where many abscond-ing criminals from India are suspectedto have fled. (The Telegraph, August 1,2008).

CC: How is it that information aboutphone calls to Pakistan from a jail inGujarat, a clandestine and illegal act,was not made public before theAhmedabad blasts?

K. Failure of intelligence: The Gujaratpolice have been severely criticised forinefficiency or worse in intelligence-gathering (The Times of India, July 27,2008).

Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad(ATS) suspects that the conspiracyto carry out the bomb blasts inAhmedabad was hatched by SIMI dur-ing a meeting in Gujarat in January.Around 15 SIMI men, including itschief, Safdar Nagori, his deputy, ShibliAbdul, and Sajid Mansoori and AsifKagzi, two high-ranking activists fromGujarat, are said to have attended thetwo-day training camp in a forest areanear Halol, around 50 km from Baroda,on January 13-14, the ATS said (DNA,August 4, 2008).

According to the Gujarat police,Safdar Nagori, the SIMI MadhyaPradesh unit chief who was arrestedalong with 12 others on March 27,2008 from Indore (and has been ina Madhya Pradesh jail since then),had trained SIMI activists in theHalol jungle. Now we are told that

another training camp also took place30 km from Indore while yet anotherone was held in Kerala.

The Gujarat police’s breakthroughmentions the Halol training camp. It alsoemerges that the ATS Maharashtra haddetained Nagori for almost a month be-fore the Ahmedabad blasts and then senthim back to the Rewa jail where he isstill in custody (The Times of India, Au-gust 17, and DNA, August 18, 2008).

CC: If the ATS had gained such in-criminating evidence of a training campattended by Nagori and others, includ-ing Mansuri, why were these leads notfollowed through? Why did they notinform the Gujarat police of the train-ing camp when they learnt of it? If theydid, how is it that the Gujarat police

Ahmedabad, July 2008



were clueless about the terror trainingcamp held in the Halol forest in Janu-ary 2008? Is it at all credible that SIMI,a banned organisation, could hold sucharms training camps in Modi’s Gujarat?Besides, how did information about thiscamp, which took place on January 13-14, 2008, six months ago, miraculouslysurface through the Mumbai ATS onlyafter the Ahmedabad blasts? What werethe ATS Maharashtra and the AhmedabadCrime Branch doing with this informa-tion all this time? What evidence do theyhave to definitively say that this meet-ing actually took place in January 2008?

What were the Madhya Pradesh,Gujarat, Kerala and Maharashtra authori-ties doing with this collective knowl-edge of training camps until now?

Why did the Gujarat police not go infor early arrests or impose surveillanceon suspects if they did know that theperpetrators were in the state?

Did the states of Madhya Pradesh,Maharashtra and Rajasthan lack coordi-nation and fail to share crucial detailsof the interrogation?

Was it plain complacency or worseon their part?

The breakthrough claim of theGujarat police raises more questionsthan it answers.

Criminal antecedents of the Gujaratpolice and administration

The same individuals who occupy toppositions in the state executive andadministration have now presented uswith an open-and-shut case. Of the 10persons arrested for planning and plant-ing the bombs, nine hail from Gujarat.Apart from Modi and Pande, 66 others(ministers, civil servants and policemen)face serious charges of being part of amass criminal conspiracy – deliberatedereliction of duty to protect the livesof innocent members of the minoritycommunity. Despite glaring evidence ofthe conspiracy, the Gujarat police haveconsistently refused to register a firstinformation report (FIR) and the mat-ter is pending before the Supreme Court.

The tragic burning alive of 59 per-sons in the Sabarmati Express at Godhrawas itself manipulated to suit a sinistergame plan orchestrated by the state’schief minister, aided by central intelli-gence and the country’s home ministerat the time, LK Advani. Both tried their

hardest to project what the then dis-trict collector, Jayanti Ravi, had termedan ‘accident’ as an ‘ISI-led conspiracy’.

Prompted by members of his sanghparivar and aided by submissive offic-ers like PC Pande, the chief minister al-lowed the burnt corpses to be carriedin open cavalcades into Ahmedabad citythus stoking hatred against the Muslimminority which had already been de-clared guilty in this diabolical plan forthe Godhra burnings.

An obliging police commissioner de-layed the imposition of curfew inAhmedabad until the afternoon of Feb-ruary 28, 2002 even though 26 violentincidents had already been registeredthe previous day. In the six-and-a-halfyears since the genocide of Gujarat

2002 the state administration and po-lice continue in their efforts at subver-sion of the criminal justice system. Thisincludes instances of perjury on oathbefore the Supreme Court of India. Givensuch antecedents, how can one be surethat the same government machinery hasfunctioned professionally and with in-tegrity during investigations into therecent bomb blasts?

Pande’s appointment to the highestpolice post in the state has been chal-lenged in the apex court. Citizens forJustice and Peace – an organisation ofwhich this writer happens to be secre-tary – has questioned the decision ofthe state government to appoint himas DGP when another case charging himof gross dereliction of duty during thegenocide in 2002 is pending in theSupreme Court.

At the last hearing of this writ pe-tition in early August CJP filed an affi-davit in the Supreme Court. Attachedto it were two letters, written on April19 and 29, 2002 by Pande, the then

police commissioner of Ahmedabad toK. Chakravarti, the then DGP, Gujarat,complaining about the role of sanghparivar leaders, including a BJP minis-ter, Bharat Barot, in the continuingcommunal violence in the city. Whilehe spoke the truth to the DGP in theseconfidential letters in April 2002,Pande has continued to delude theSupreme Court even in his counter-af-fidavit filed on July 31, 2008.

Do we still remember that a bigquestion mark hangs over the Gujaratpolice for the involvement of some ofits senior officers in politically-drivenencounter (extrajudicial) killings? Twosenior officers of the Gujarat police,Modi’s blue-eyed boy, DG Vanzara, andNarendra Amin are still in custody for

these crimes. The Ahmedabad CrimeBranch is notorious for the illegal de-tention of prominent Muslims, espe-cially those who offered relief and shel-ter to the victims in 2002, detentionsthat were carried out by officers likeTarun Barot and Vanzara.

Significantly, Tarun Barot, a policeofficer indicted by the Concerned Citi-zens Tribunal – Gujarat 2002 for hisclose links to international presidentof the VHP, Praveen Togadia, is part ofthe crime bureau that probed the re-cent blasts.

Yet faced as we are with a cynicalsystem that delays judicial trial of grosshuman rights abuses, a media that re-ports honestly on the blood on thestreets but wears blinkers on the ideo-logical and systemic rot in the system,we are today expected to put aside theunsavoury track record of the Gujaratgovernment, bureaucracy and police andaccept, unquestioningly, their claimthat they have solved the Ahmedabadblasts case in 21 days.

Faced as we are with a cynical system that delaysFaced as we are with a cynical system that delaysFaced as we are with a cynical system that delaysFaced as we are with a cynical system that delaysFaced as we are with a cynical system that delaysjudicial trial of gross human rights abuses, ajudicial trial of gross human rights abuses, ajudicial trial of gross human rights abuses, ajudicial trial of gross human rights abuses, ajudicial trial of gross human rights abuses, amedia that reports honestly on the blood on themedia that reports honestly on the blood on themedia that reports honestly on the blood on themedia that reports honestly on the blood on themedia that reports honestly on the blood on thestreets but wears blinkers on the ideological andstreets but wears blinkers on the ideological andstreets but wears blinkers on the ideological andstreets but wears blinkers on the ideological andstreets but wears blinkers on the ideological andsystemic rot in the system, we are today expectedsystemic rot in the system, we are today expectedsystemic rot in the system, we are today expectedsystemic rot in the system, we are today expectedsystemic rot in the system, we are today expectedto put aside the unsavoury track record of theto put aside the unsavoury track record of theto put aside the unsavoury track record of theto put aside the unsavoury track record of theto put aside the unsavoury track record of theGujarat government, bureaucracy and police andGujarat government, bureaucracy and police andGujarat government, bureaucracy and police andGujarat government, bureaucracy and police andGujarat government, bureaucracy and police andaccept, unquestioningly, their claim that they haveaccept, unquestioningly, their claim that they haveaccept, unquestioningly, their claim that they haveaccept, unquestioningly, their claim that they haveaccept, unquestioningly, their claim that they havesolved the Ahmedabad blasts case in 21 dayssolved the Ahmedabad blasts case in 21 dayssolved the Ahmedabad blasts case in 21 dayssolved the Ahmedabad blasts case in 21 dayssolved the Ahmedabad blasts case in 21 days

Documents

BLAST AFTER BLAST · Jairam Tuptewar and Rahul Manohar Pande – were seriously injured. On hearing of the incident, an as-sistant police inspector (API) from the local Bhagyanagar