The crime
On September 29, 2008 there was a bomb explosion in a crowded locality of Malegaon. The explosion occurred opposite the Shakil Goods Transport Company, located between Anjuman Chowk and Bhiku Chowk, a busy and populous part of town. The blast was caused by an improvised explosive device (IED) fitted on an LML Freedom motorcycle bearing the registration number MH-15-4572. Six persons were killed as a result of the explosion and 101 persons sustained various degrees of injuries. Property worth Rs 4,23,500 was also destroyed. The IED was assembled using RDX, ammonium nitrate and ammonium nitrite.

This act was the handiwork of a group of conspirators whose ultimate aim, according to the ATS charge sheet in the Malegaon case, was to “propagate a separate Hindu Rashtra with its own constitution and aims and with Bharat Swarajya, Surajya, Suraksha, in its preamble”. The charge sheet goes on to say that members of “this organised crime syndicate wanted to adopt a national flag i.e. solo-themed saffron flag with a golden border. The length of the flag would be twice its breadth, with an ancient golden torch (bhagwa dhwaj)”.

The charge sheet filed by the ATS runs into 4,528 pages. It contains two confessional statements of accused Rakesh Dhawade and Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi alias Swami Dayanand Pandey, a list of 431 witnesses the prosecution wishes to examine and forensic evidence. The ATS has also included telephone, audio and video transcripts running into hundreds of pages. A total of 14 persons have been named as accused in the crime and arrests began in October 2008. Three of the 14 accused are absconding.
 
The conspirators
1. Sadhvi Pragnyasingh Chandra-
palsingh Thakur alias Swami Purnachetanand Giri (38), originally from Madhya Pradesh but living in Surat, Gujarat. A member of the VHP’s Durga Vahini and a former member of the ABVP, Pragnya Thakur is closely associated with BJP leaders and has participated in their election campaign meetings as well.
2. Shivnarayan Gopalsingh Kalsangra (36), a native of Madhya Pradesh and living in Indore.
3. Shyam Bhavarlal Sahu (42) from Madhya Pradesh.
4. Ramesh Shivji Upadhyaya (57) from Uttar Pradesh. He organised camps and training modules to ideologically and physically draw young men into violence. (The fact that Upadhyaya is a retired officer of the Indian army is not mentioned in the charge sheet.)
5. Sameer Sharad Kulkarni (39), a resident of Pune but originally from Jalgaon in Maharashtra. A former ABVP member, Kulkarni revived the Abhinav Bharat in Pune. He worked at a Bhopal printing press for some time and was in charge of Abhinav Bharat’s activities in Madhya Pradesh.
6. Ajay alias Raja Eknath Rahirkar (39), living in both Pune and Jalgaon. He was Abhinav Bharat’s Pune-based treasurer who provided logistical and financial support to Kulkarni and Purohit.
7. Rakesh Dattatraya Dhawade alias Rao (42) from Pune district. He is an arms expert linked to Abhinav Bharat.
8. Jagdish Chintaman Mhatre (40) from Dombivli, Thane.
9. Lt Col Prasad Srikant Purohit alias Balawant Rao alias Shreyak Ranadive (36), living in Pune and Panchmarhi, Madhya Pradesh. This is the first time that a serving army officer has been accused in a terror attack. Purohit is charged with providing training, coordinating the blasts, sourcing funds and arranging for the explosives. Being an army officer, he operated under at least two aliases.
10. Sudhakar Udaybhan Dhar Dwivedi alias Swami Dayanand Pandey alias Swami Amrutanand Devtirth alias Shankaracharya of Sharada Sarvagy Peeth (40), a native of Jammu living in Uttar Pradesh. A self-styled ‘Dharma Guru’, Dwivedi was also guru to the Sadhvi, Pragnya Thakur. There are possible indications that could link Dwivedi to the Kanpur blast in October and the Jammu agitation over the Amarnath shrine last year.
11. Sudhakar Onkarnath Chaturvedi (37), a resident of Nashik but originally from Uttar Pradesh.

Absconding accused:
12. Ramchandra Gopalsingh Kalsangra (38) from Indore in Madhya Pradesh. The person responsible for planting the explosives at Malegaon, Ramchandra Kalsangra was in constant touch with Sadhvi Pragnya Thakur and coordinated the blasts.
13. Sandeep Vishwas Dange, from Indore in Madhya Pradesh.
14. Pravin Mutalik, a resident of Karnataka.
Sections Applied: Sections 302, 307, 326, 324, 427, 153A, 153A(1)(b) and 120B of the IPC read with Sections 3, 4, 5 and 25 of the Arms Act 1959 read with Sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the Explosive Substances Act 1908 read with Sections 15, 16, 17, 18, 20 and 23 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act 2004 read with Sections 3(1)(i), 3(1)(ii), 3(2), 3(4) and 3(5) of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) 1999.
The police are also on the lookout for Swami Ashim Anand from the Dangs district in Gujarat who has been absconding since the day news leaked out that the ATS was on the hunt for him. If caught, fresh details about the plot might be revealed along with possible links to the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad, blasts as well as the blasts on the Samjhauta Express.
This crime syndicate procured and transported the materials required for the bomb explosions… These acts are often committed in areas where there is a dense population of Muslims. The supposed justification for these actions is revenge for acts committed by the Muslim community

Unlawful assembly
The terror ring held meetings at various places i.e. Faridabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Indore, Nashik, etc to plan their conspiracy under the banner of Abhinav Bharat, which was concurrently propagating its idea of a Hindu nation to be established through a takeover by the army.

To further this larger conspiracy, a meeting was held at Faridabad on January 25-26, 2008 at which the accused Prasad Srikant Purohit, Ramesh Upadhyaya and Sudhakar Chaturvedi were present. At the meeting Srikant Purohit took on the responsibility for providing the explosives while Sudhakar Chaturvedi took on the responsibility for providing two men who would set off a blast at an unspecified location. Chaturvedi also offered the use of his house at Vanat Chawl, Bhagur Road, Deolali camp, Nashik, as a location where the IED could be assembled and stored. The keys to Chaturvedi’s house were kept at the Military Intelligence (MI) office at the Deolali camp, Nashik. Purohit had asked Pravin Mutalik (an absconding accused) to collect the keys from the MI office at Deolali so as to enter Chaturvedi’s house for the purpose of assembling the IED which was finally used to explode bombs at Malegaon.

At a similar meeting held in Bhopal on April 11-12, 2008 the conspirators, Pragnya Thakur, Ramesh Upadhyaya, Sameer Kulkarni, Srikant Purohit, Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey and Sudhakar Chaturvedi among others, together plotted to take revenge against Muslims in Malegaon by exploding a bomb in a densely populated area. Srikant Purohit took on the responsibility for providing the explosives while Pragnya Thakur took on the responsibility for providing men to carry out the explosion. It was at this meeting that all the participants decided to carry out the explosion at Malegaon.

Around June 11, 2008 another meeting was held, this time at the Circuit House in Indore. At this meeting Pragnya Thakur introduced Ramchandra Kalsangra (an absconding accused) and Sandeep Dange to Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi, saying that both these persons were her confidants and had always supported her. Sometime in the first week of July 2008, at another meeting in Indore, Pragnya Thakur asked Dwivedi to direct Srikant Purohit to give the explosives to Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange in Pune.
 
Unravelling a conspiracy
The ATS has held that all the accused persons were part of a criminal conspiracy operating through meetings held in different parts of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh between January 2008 and October 23, 2008, the object of which was to commit unlawful acts in furtherance of the criminal conspiracy.

The charge sheet states that the organised crime syndicate has been active since the year 2003; a key member of this syndicate, arrested accused Rakesh Dattatraya Dhawade, has been active since then. Rakesh Dhawade was among those present at an oath-taking ceremony of members of Abhinav Bharat that was held at Raigad Fort in 2006, which Srikant Purohit and Ajay Rahirkar also attended. Dhawade and the organised crime syndicate had been carrying out bomb blasts since 2003. All the accused also joined this syndicate and continued its unlawful activities. Dhawade was involved in procuring arms and ammunition for the group. This organised crime syndicate procured, acquired and transported the materials that were required for the bomb explosions and also transferred vast amounts of money, arms and ammunition used to carry out its unlawful activities. These unlawful acts are often committed in areas where there is a dense population of Muslims. The supposed justification for these actions is revenge for acts committed by the Muslim community.
 
Missing links
Army and intelligence links
The most dangerous trend revealed by the Nanded investigations and reconfirmed now in the Malegaon probe is the involvement of both serving and retired officers of Indian intelligence agencies and the Indian army in training outfits that are ideologically opposed to the Indian Constitution, in the making of bombs, in generating terror and in spreading bitter communal poison.

A serving officer and four retired officers of the Indian armed forces have already been shown up for their links to various recent acts of terror. The Malegaon charge sheet implicates Purohit and Upadhyaya in the crime. But Col (retd) S. Raikar, a former Indian army officer and until recently the commandant of the Bhonsala Military School, Nashik, who made the school campus available for training terror groups, was questioned by the police but has been spared in the ATS charge sheet. He has since resigned from his position at the Bhonsala Military School.

The earlier charge sheet(s) of 2006 (prepared by the ATS Maharashtra) in the Nanded blast case implicate Sanatkumar Bhate in training members of the Bajrang Dal at the Akanksha Resort at Sinhgad near Pune. Bhate is a former officer in the Indian navy. A legitimate follow-up to this would be to probe the true depth of ideological infiltration into the Indian armed forces, of ideologies that seek to establish a religion-based state through violent means. The ATS does not mention the positions or former positions that some of the accused have held in the armed forces. Does this omission by the ATS stem from a reluctance to track the role of army and navy officers in unconstitutional acts? The ATS has also not probed the involvement of any army officials in these crimes. Those army men who were questioned have been given a clean chit and been named only as witnesses.

Lt Col Purohit procured the RDX (research department explosive) used in the blast while he was posted in Jammu and Kashmir. He stored it in his homes in Pune and Nashik. The transcripts included as part of the charge sheet implicate Purohit in at least two other similar incidents whereas the ATS charge sheet limits itself to the Malegaon incident alone. In these transcripts Purohit said, “Main kuch baat kahunga isse pehle kabhi nahi kahi gayi thi. Do operation humne kiye, successful ho gaye. Operation karne ki meri kshamta hain, swamiji. Mere paas equipment ki kami nahi hain. Main equipment paida kar sakta hoon. Equipment la sakta hoon. Agar jab thaan leta hoon. Lekin target chunna yeh mere ek ke vishay ke hisaab nahi hona chahiye (I will say something that I have not spoken of before. We have carried out two operations in the past and they were successful. I am capable of carrying out operations. I have more than enough equipment. Getting equipment is easy… But choosing the target should not be my decision alone).”
In this probe, the ATS has also failed to question many of the conspirators who plotted a Hindutva takeover of the country. For instance, reference is made to a two-time BJP parliamentarian named Col Dhar and a Delhi-based doctor, RP Singh, who were actively engaged in giving shape to Purohit’s idea of a “new nation”. The probable links of the accused with others who currently occupy influential political positions have not been probed further.

The ATS also stops short of drawing the wider link to the larger network of terror that resulted in the Nanded blast of 2006 and the Malegaon blast in 2008. While it has included the Parbhani and Jalna mosque blasts within the wider conspiracy, Nanded is mysteriously absent.
 
Bhonsala Military School, Akanksha Resort spared
The Bhonsala Military School, located at two places in Maharashtra (Nashik and Nagpur), which were the locations used for training cadres in bomb-making and the use of explosives, has escaped the ATS net. So has the Akanksha Resort at the Sinhgad Fort, Pune, where such training in explosives creation possibly takes place even today.

While some of the school’s functionaries have been cited as witnesses, the ATS has given the institute lenient treatment. This despite the fact that a top functionary of the school, Col (retd) S. Raikar, the then commandant of the Bhonsala Military School, Nashik, and a former officer of the Indian army, is accused of making available the campus where these groups were trained. Raikar himself has only been made a witness.

Materials used
RDX was used in the IEDs exploded at Malegaon. Another disturbing trend over the past few years or so is the leakage and consequent availability of highly controlled and dangerous substances like RDX in the marketplace for easy use by any outfits that wish to make a career out of bomb-making. In India, RDX is only legally available to the Indian army. Yet there have been reported cases of RDX leakage in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana, which have been treated casually by the state police. Gelatine sticks and ammonium nitrate, volatile substances that are often used in the making of bombs, are carefully controlled in law and leakages from both industrial and retail users should be very easy to trace. The ATS charge sheet in the Malegaon case avoids any investigation into the leakage of these explosive substances.

The fact that this has not been done in any blast-related cases, be it the Samjhauta Express, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Thane or Panvel, establishes not just the laxity in our investigating agencies. It underscores the cynicism of a political class, across party lines, that places a tragically low premium on life itself and uses communalism of all hues to further electoral gain.
 
The missing Mithun Chakraborty
The Malegaon investigation also reveals in its forensic laboratory reports that a person who went by the name of Mithun Chakraborty, after a training session with recruits, handed over a bag containing large quantities of RDX to conspirators at the Pune railway station. Investigators have concluded that this is an assumed name. Chakraborty is untraceable and the ATS’s failure to trace him remains a gaping hole in their investigations.

The name of a mysterious trainer, Mithun Chakraborty first surfaced during the interrogation and narco analysis test of Rahul Pande, a key suspect in the 2006 Nanded blast investigations who revealed that a tall well-built man identified as Chakraborty alias Sir was the main conspirator in the plot. Pande also stated that Chakraborty had trained right-wing Hindu militants to prepare various kinds of bombs and IEDs and had even procured and provided them with large quantities of explosives to make more bombs.
 
Organisations spared
What is Abhinav Bharat? The ATS charge sheet tells us that the Abhinav Bharat is an organisation floated in 2007. The charge sheet claims this organisation is not the same as the public charitable trust registered in the same name even though its founder, Himani Savarkar, was present at one of the meetings the conspirators held! Savarkar is on record as stating her concurrence with the actions of the Malegaon accused and justifies her position with the assertion that “only bombs can reply to bombs”. The ATS’s assertion – that the two organisations bearing the same name and sworn to the same ideology are unconnected – rings hollow.
 
Why was Section 125 not applied?
The crime syndicate has among other things also advocated the overthrow of the Indian republic bound by the Indian Constitution in favour of a Hindu nation under army rule. These chilling visions of the syndicate’s dream future are clearly revealed in the Malegaon charge sheet. This vision was advocated in public and secret meetings to fire youngsters and urge them to enlist in the cause. The ideology that drives the conspirators is not only manifest in ‘retaliatory’ acts of bomb terror, such as the attack in Malegaon, but also goes to the very foundation of the republic itself. The transcripts describe extensive mobilisation of young cadres by the conspirators and others, in public, to generate anger against the Indian Constitution and advocate the overthrow of the Indian republic. If these acts do not amount to sedition, what does?

Despite detailed transcripts of conversations between Purohit and others that reveal commitment to the overthrow of the Indian secular republic and the creation of a militarised Hindu nation, Section 125 of the IPC – for waging war against any Asiatic power in alliance with the Government of India – has not been applied.

(Speaking to CC, acting chief of the ATS, KP Raghuvanshi said that he was concerned with creating a watertight case that could ensure convictions and not in outlining charges that could not be proved. “We consulted senior public prosecutors who advised us that the ingredients of sedition were not present in the crime itself.”)

Section 125 of the IPC states: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law in India, shall be punished with imprisonment for life to which fine may be added.”

In law the actions of these conspirators amount to sedition and war against the Indian state. If it is proved that this war is being waged from the inside, from a section, not exactly small, of our army, and this fact has escaped the attention of the top echelons of the armed forces so far, it would be logical to conclude that the infiltration into our armed forces runs deep. Just as an ideologically fanatic ISI of Pakistan must shoulder a substantial share of the responsibility for their country’s disintegration into violence and chaos, the trends revealed in the Nanded and Malegaon investigations have the potential, if allowed to pass unchecked, of driving India to disintegration, if not total destruction.

Archived from Communalism Combat,  February 2009 Year 15    No.137, Cover Story 2
 

The post Criminal conspiracy – The ATS charge sheet in the Malegaon blast case appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Mr. Narayanan’s pieceappears to be suffering from an extremely short-sighted and biased approach towards terrorism. While he rattles endlessly on the subject of radical Islamist extremismhe has nothing to say on radical ‘white supremacist’ extremism, radical Hindutva extremism, radical Maoist extremism etc, all of which fit into the category of terrorism according to the above definition. In equating terrorism with only Islamic terrorism Mr. Narayanan is perhaps blindly following the Islamophobic model led by the USA. It is common knowledge that the USA supported by the Saudi regime has been responsible for spawning terrorist groups such as the Al-Qaeda to suit its global designs. It is also believed that the US military industrial complex’s survival and growth aredependent on the continued acts of terrorism committed by militant groups like the Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

It needs to be emphasized again and again that the various acts of racist violence perpetrated by supremacist groups such as the Alt-Right,neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan,and our ownRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)are nothing but terrorist acts. But sadly we finda majority of Western and Indian mainstream mediataking a blinkered view of the subjectand equating terrorism with only Islamist terrorism.Mr Narayanan too needs to take off his blinkers to see things in their proper perspective – that there is a common thread of hate running between David Copeland of UK who killed three persons in 1999 with his “Nail Bombs”, Anders Behring Breivik who massacred 77 persons at Utoeya islandin Norway in 2011, Gianluca Casseri of Italy who killed 2 Senegal traders at Florence in 2011, Wade Michael Page who rained bullets on a Sikh Gurudwara in Wisconsin US and killed 7 persons in 2012 and Brenton Tarrant who exterminated 50 persons in New Zealand recently. All these killers and many others are believed to be loosely linked to the global neo-Nazi movement which todaycalls itself the Alt-Right. The Alt-Right gave exceedingly vocal support to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and in turn was rewarded with several administrative posts in the Trump government.

The Alt-Right& RSS
Reportedly the Indian far right extremist groupRSS is also a part of the Alt-Right and they keep in touch mainly through the Net. It is definitely not a coincidence that one of the Sangh Parivar outfits celebrated when Donald Trump became the president of USA. Pieter Friedrich in his article ‘From Christchurch to India: How India’s RSS Inspires White Nationalist Violence in World’, tells us thatin 2009 John Morgan and Swedish white nationalist Daniel Friberg founded a media firm known as Arktos Mediabased in Budapest. John Morgan became its Editor-in-Chief. Arktos, which claims to represent the European New Right or Alt-Right, has published approximately 200 titles. Interestingly the company’s base of operations, from 2010 to 2014, was India. Pieter claims that the Alt-Right has been influenced by the RSS and its ideology. But actuallythe founding fathers of RSS drew their inspiration from and were heavily influenced by Fascism and Nazism. Dr B.S.Moonje, one of the co-founders of RSS had visited Italy in 1931 and met Il Duce (BenitoMussolini) at the Palazzo Venezia. Dr Moonje hadclosely studied the workings of Mussolini’s fascist repressive youth brigades such as the ‘Black Shirts’, Balilla, Avanguardista etc. After he returned to India he gave an interview to the Maratha newspaper in which he praised those youth movements of Italy and said they needed to be adopted in India. We all know that in later years the RSS did establish its own youth movements which today have become a seriousmenace to civilized society.

Friberg reveals some very, very significant information on the links between Alt-Right and RSS. He states that in October 2013, Arktos reported that Friberg and the company’s Chief Marketing Officer “paid the Hindu Traditional-Conservative party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) an official visit.” They met with the then Karnataka State BJP General Secretary Arvind Limbavali and Organizing Secretary B.L. Santhosh (who later joined the national party leadership). “Topics discussed included similarities and possibilities of cooperation between traditionalist and conservative movements in Europe and Asia,” reported Arktos. They also talked about “future book projects.”

Saffron Terror
Mr Narayanan who once occupied the crucial post of National Security Adviser, surely must be aware (though he may not admit it) that the Sangh Parivarhas been responsible for innumerable acts of saffron terror in India.He must also be in the know of the fact that in 2005, the U.S. State Department had named the RSS as an “extremist” group “implicated in incidents of violence and discrimination against Christians and Muslims.” To recount a few incidents: In1947 RSS cadres participated in ethnic cleansing of up to 100,000 Muslims in Kashmir just two weeks before control of the region was ceded to the newly-formed Republic of India. Then came the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi followed bydozens of communal riots, the Babri Masjid demolition, the Mumbai Riots, Samjhauta Express blast, Ajmer Darga blast, Mecca Masjid blast, Malegaon blasts, the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, the 2008 church attacks,assassinations such as that of Pastor Graham Staines and the recent cold-blooded murders of Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Phansare, M.M. Kalburgi, Gauri Lankesh, Mohammed Akhlaq, Ghulam Mohammed, Azhar Khan, Pehlu Khan, Zainul Ansari…………..    The list is sickeningly long.

It is a great shame that a majority of Indian mainstream mediaand a number ofofficials in the most sensitive and responsible positions seem towear coloured glasses and steadfastlyrefuse to call a spade a spade. They continue to turn a blind eye to theracist hate crimes of the Sangh Parivar such as Dalit and Minority-bashing, mob lynching, moral policing, bomb blasts etc etcand decline to name them as terrorist acts.Is it then any wonder that many innocent Indian minorities and Dalitsare made to spend several years in prison on trumped-up charges while the saffron brigade manages to get away with its terror attacks?In this context it is perhaps worth recalling that the committee that gave a clean chit to Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom case, during which nearly two thousand five hundred persons were slaughtered, was headed by Mr Narayanan.
 
Acknowledgements: [i] Wikipedia
[ii]“From Christchurch to India: How India’s RSS Inspires White Nationalist
Violencein World” by Pieter Friedrich, countercurrents.org, April 4, 2019.
                               [iii] “Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival evidence”, Marzia Casolari,
                                    Economic & Political Weekly, January 22, 2000.
 
Related Articles:
1. Blast after Blast: Who is responsible?
2. The Bhonsla School
3. Hindutva Terror: The terror trail: From Nanded to Malegaon and beyond

The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia. 
 

The post Calling a spade a spade: Hindutva Terrorism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Kerala has been rocked by violent protests by BJP-RSS and right-wing outfits after two women of menstruating age offered prayers at the Ayyappa temple on January 2. Several houses and shops of rival leaders and workers were attacked, some were bombed, over the Sabarimala issue.
 
The Nedumangad police in Thiruvananthapuram identified the person who threw bombs at the Nedumangad Police Station on Thursday, 3 January, during the state-wide hartal called by the Sabarimala Karma Samithi.
 
Praveen, an RSS district campaigner, was seen hurling bombs at the police station towards a group of policemen on CCTV footage. In the video, Praveen can be seen taking aim at the station and throwing multiple bombs that he was carrying in a bag.
 
The hartal on Thursday had been called to protest against the entry of two women in their forties, Bindu and Kanakadurga, who had entered Sabarimala temple early on Wednesday morning, as well as to mark the death of Sabarimala Karma Samithi worker Chandran Unnithan, who died in a stone-pelting incident in Pandalam, which took place over the women’s temple entry issue.
 
Praveen is identified as an RSS worker from Nooranad in Alappuzha. Nedumangad police station officials told The News Minute that he had gone into hiding after the incident took place, and has not been arrested yet. The police are also looking to identify any individuals who might have accompanied or assisted Praveen.
 
A clash between CPI (M) and BJP workers took place near Nedumangad police station as well, while violent protests were held in Thiruvananthapuram, Palakkad, Kozhikode, Kollam, Kasargode, Kannur, Vadakara, Mavelikkara and Thrissur.
 
The Vyapari Vyavasaaya Ekopana Samithi (VVES), a trade union of shopkeepers and traders, had initially decided to flout the hartal and keep shops open for business in most locations as part of their vow to not observe hartals in 2019. They were soon forced to shut down following the attacks of BJP-RSS protesters at those locations.
 
Over 1,300 cases were registered by the Kerala police in hartal-related violence all over the state, and over 3,187 people have been arrested so far.
 
Kannur district, which has been tense since the Wednesday hartal called by the Sabarimala Action Council, backed by the BJP, over the entry of women into Sabarimala, stayed tense with attacks and counter-attacks by cadres of the CPI(M) and the RSS.
 
On Thursday night, a bomb was hurled at the house of a local CPI(M) leader in Thalasery. The following night, a local leader of the DYFI, the youth outfit of the CPI(M), was stabbed at Iritty in Kannur district, allegedly by members of the RSS-BJP on Friday night.
 
Late Friday night, the houses of BJP Rajya Sabha member V Muraleedharan, BJP Kannur district secretary N Haridas and district-level RSS leader C Chandrasekharan were attacked. Bombs were also hurled at the houses of CPI(M) legislator A N Shamseer and former district secretary P Sasi. A local office of the RSS was set on fire at Cheruthazham in Kannur early Saturday morning.
 
State CM Pinarayi Vijayan said that the “State will deal with the RSS violence sternly.”
 
“They are trying to destroy the peace and tranquillity of the state. We will take strong action against it. It’s the RSS agenda to create fear in the minds of the people,” Vijayan told reporters, adding that it will not be allowed. He said people of the state have shown restraint.
 
“The RSS workers were attacking houses of MLAs, and other leaders. Their only aim and route is violence. The law and order system of the state will take care of it,” he said.
 
Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala alleged the state police had failed to maintain law and order.
 
“DGP himself has accepted this. Why has the government failed to stop the BJP from creating violence?” Chennithala asked.
 
“As violence continued to disrupt life in Kannur and other places, state police chief Loknath Behera sounded a state-wide alert and gave direction to take stern action against those responsible for attacks on houses of party leaders. According to Behara, 1286 cases have been registered till tonight and 3282 people arrested in connection with the violent incidents since the January 3 hartal called against the entry of two women into the hill temple. Of the arrested, 487 have been remanded and 2,795 granted bail,” Economic Times reported.
 

The post Sabarimala row: CCTV catches RSS agent throwing bombs at police station appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 

The Pune Police raided the homes of human rights activists in Mumbai, Ranchi, Hyderabad, Delhi, Faridabad and Goa. Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira (Mumbai), Gautam Navlakha (New Delhi), Sudha Bharadwaj (Faridabad) and Varavara Rao (Hyderabad) were taken into custody, while Anand Teltumbde’s Goa residence was raided. The search warrants cite sections of the anti-terrorism law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and sections of the Indian Penal Code relating to the offence of promoting enmity between groups. These arrests are nothing but a conspiracy of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to counter the rising demands for investigating and banning the Hindutva terrorist outfits like Sanatan Sanstha (SS) in the country. 

Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and Special Investigation Team (SIT) in Karnataka have made several arrests related to the political assassinations of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M M Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh. All those who have been arrested so far have connections with the Goa-based SS, and its affiliates. Yesterday’s arrests is an attempt to divert attention from the complex and large terror network of SS, and a conspiracy to carry out serial bomb attacks on Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi. 

It cannot be a coincidence that Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit – one of the accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, who is now out on bail – filed a petition in the Supreme Court on August 27, 2018, asking for an SIT probe into his arrest. Claiming that he was arrested for political reasons by the Congress government, the petition also alleges that Purohit was targeted because he was instrumental in breaking the back of the radicals such as SIMI, ISI terror network etc. The petition also goes on to say that his arrest was a “conspiracy of some political elements to frame the Petitioner in a false case for the purposes of establishing and coining the term ‘Saffron Terror’”. 

The truth of the Hindutva terror or the saffron terror in making came to light following the bomb blast in Malegaon, Maharashtra, on September 29, 2008, which killed four people and injured 79. Abhinav Bharat, a Hindu extremist group founded by retired Major of Indian Army Ramesh Upadhyay and Lt. Col. Purohit were said to be behind the blast. Following the investigations by the Maharashtra ATS – led by late Hemant Karkare – Pragya Singh Thakur, Upadhyay, Purohit, Sameer Kulkarni, Rakesh Dhawade, Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Pravin Takalki were arrested. All the arrested, except for Rakesh Dhawade, are out on bail. 

Sanatan Sanstha’s Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik were reportedly ferrying a bomb to be planted in Margao, and died in the blast behind Grace Church on the eve of Diwali on October 16, 2009.The saffron terror is on rise since then. Credits to the lethargy or ignorance of or the political influence on the investigative agencies, this terror network has been successful in establishing itself. 

ATS, following the clues by the SIT, had arrested Vaibhav Raut, Sharad Kalaskar and Sudhanwa Gondhalekar. The ATS, which made the arrests in Nalasopara and Pune on August 10, had recovered about 20 crude bombs, pistols, magazines and explosive material from them. ATS now has arrested Avinash Pawar in Mumbai on August 25, 2018, in the case of hoarding explosives. It is no longer only the question of the political assassination of rationalists or the assassins, but it is about the brain behind a larger conspiracy in the country. During the course of its investigations, the SIT has recovered two lists containing names of 36individuals who had publicly condemned Hindutva politics. These lists were put together in July 2016 and were being updated ever since. All those who have been arrested by the SIT till now, are linked to SS and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS). The SS, which proudly says that they provide the RSS with its missing spiritual outlook, also trains its seekers to use air rifles, and is also known for its extremist ideology of violence.

On August 27, 2018, the SS called for a press meet and reiterated what they have been saying since the Madgaon blasts, that all the accusations against them are false. In this press meet, the spokesperson of SS said, “Few of the arrested Hindutva-vadi activists did participate on local levels in various programmes conducted by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti for uniting Hindus, but they also worked through the medium of other organisations. And, now just because they are arrested, demanding a ban on Sanatan or demanding arrest of the head of Sanatan is ridiculous! It is as good as demanding a ban on Congress or demanding arrest of Rahul Gandhi if a leader of a party supporting Congress is arrested. Although all progressive leaders are targeting a minor spiritual organisation like Sanatan Sanstha, which is propagating spirituality, their real objective is to defame the BJP Government in the name of Hindu terrorism in view of the forthcoming elections.” 

It is in fact true that the so far arrested are not directly the members of SS, but a close look at the work of the SS tells us that these organisations make one body together, and function with different names and agendas to ensure that in case of any criminal investigation, the leaders can safely distance themselves from the perpetrators of the crime. As it is done with any other religious extremist groups, the office bearers, leaders, transactions of the Hindutva organisations functioning in the country should be investigated. It is but natural that the SS finds this demand “ridiculous”, as it would dismantle the terror kingdom that it has contributed in building along with the other Hindutva groups functioning in the country. 

As a joint statement released by the progressive individuals condemning the arrests of the activists said, the crackdown on activists is nothing but an attempt by the government to strike terror among those who are fighting for justice for the marginalised. This is also an attempt by the BJP to invent a false enemy, and engage in scaremongering in order to polarise the 2019 elections in its favour. Already, the government and the media houses close to the BJP have been trying to spin a false narrative of a Maoist conspiracy since June, 2018. Terms like “urban naxals” are invented in order to stifle any criticism of the government.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in
 

The post Hindutva Terrorists Roam Free and Human Rights Activists Jailed: Story of Modi’s Bharat appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 

Rationalist Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, on being offered police protection, had remarked, “If I have to take police protection in my own country from my own people, then there is something wrong with me. I’m fighting within the framework of the Indian Constitution, and it is not against anyone, but for everyone.” Five years ago, on August 20, 2013, Dr. Dabholkar was assassinated in Pune. Under the banner of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS), an organisation that Dr. Dabholkar founded and headed, he strived to instill scientific temperament and educate the people against the irrational superstitions. His fight to eradicate prevalent inhumane and irrational superstitious practices had earned him several enemies in his home state Maharashtra. Sanatan Sanstha (SS), a Hindu extremist group founded in 1999 by Jayant Balaji Athavale, a hypnotherapist, was pointed at by Dabholkar’s supporters, relatives, and now even the investigations are pointing at the involvement of the affiliates of the SS. 

The Goa-based SS has the vision of establishing a “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu Nation) and propagating extremist Hindutva ideology. The organisation gives a call to, in its founders’ words, “Destroy evildoers if you have been advised by saints or Gurus to do so. Then these acts are not registered in your name.” Those who oppose the idea of the Hindu Rashtra are the evildoers for the SS. Hence, the organisation spreads terror by wiping out its enemies to realise its dream of establishing a Hindu Rashtra, as it did in the case of Dabholkar. A day after Dabholkar’s death, the SS published a statement by its founder, Athavale, on its website. It read, “Births and deaths are predestined, and everybody gets the fruit of their karma. Instead of dying bedridden through illness, or after some surgery, such a death for Dabholkar is a blessing of the Almighty.” Athavale added that though “Dabholkar was an atheist and did not believe in god, the same god would give solace to the departed soul.”

Two years after Dabholkar, rationalists Govind Pansare and M M Kalburgi, and in 2017 journalist Gauri Lankesh, were assassinated. The investigations have shown that the possibility of the same set of people having been involved in an attempt to silence the anti-Hindutva, rational and secular voices in the country through these assassinations is no longer a mere speculation. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) set to investigate the case of Gauri Lankesh has revealed a larger conspiracy of the extremist Hindu terror outfits functional in the country. The SIT has said that persons arrested so far in the case of Gauri Lankesh are affiliated to SS and its splinter Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS). The revelations made by the SIT reports are chilling and has brought to light a full-fledged plan to kill all those who do not propagate the idea of a  Hindu Rashtra.

SIT investigations and a new direction for investigation
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating the case of Dr. Dabholkar, still is far from arresting the assassin. The CBI arrested Sachin Prakashrao Andure of Aurangabad on August 18, 2018, alleging that he was among those who shot Dabholkar. Andure is the fourth person to be arrested in the case. On June 20, 2014 Manish Nagori and Vilas Khandewal were arrested by Pune police. Following a PIL filed by journalist Ketan Tirodkar, the CBI had taken over this case in May 2014 on the directions of the Bombay High Court. In May 2016, Virendra Tawde of SS was arrested in connection with the case. Along with Tawde, the CBI has named Vinay Pawar, who is missing since 2009, Sarang Akolkar, who is absconding in the October 2009 Goa blast case, as prime suspects. The CBI also suspects that Andure hatched the murder conspiracy with Tawde. 

While the investigations in the murders of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi have not yet nailed the culprits, the SIT investigating the murder of Gauri Lankesh, has been successful in tracking down her assassin, and his confessions have confirmed what the gun indicated and has unveiled a larger conspiracy. The conspiracy and its scale began to unravel last year when a Forensic Science Lab report revealed that the same gun was used to kill Kalburgi, Pansare and Lankesh. The three murders occurred at different places, and were months apart. It cannot be a coincidence that the same murder weapon was used everywhere.

Parashuram Waghmare was arrested on June 12, 2018, and was produced before the 3rdAdditional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Court. He has confessed to have assassinated the Gauri Lankesh to “save Hinduism”. The SIT had earlier arrested five people– K.T. Naveen Kumar alias Hotte Manja, Amol Kale, Manohar Edve, Sujeeth Kumar alias Praveen and Amit Degvekar. The confessions of Waghmare brought already arrested Amol Kale into light. During the course of its investigation, the SIT has recovered two lists containing names of 34 targeted individuals who had publicly condemned Hindutva politics. The list recovered from Amol Kale had eight names. Girish Karnad, a well-known playwright and activist from Karnataka was the first name, followed by Gauri Lankesh. The second list had 26 other names. 
While interrogating Ganesh Miskin – a member of Hindu extremist group Sri Rama Sena, who was arrested in July on the suspicion of being the person who rode the motorcycle pillion with Waghmare – the SIT has reportedly learnt that his recruiter, Amol Kale – the former convener of HJS – is the killer of Kannada scholar and rationalist, M. M. Kalburgi. As per a Kannada newsreport, Miskin has revealed that it was Kale who shot dead Kalburgi at the doorstep of his house three years ago. SIT has also reportedly learnt that Kale was ordered to carry out Kalburgi’s assassination by a person named ‘Kaka’ alias Shankar Narayan, who has died six months ago. It was Narayan’s right hand man – associated with one of the Hindutva outfits in Maharashtra such as Sanathan Sanstha or HJS – who drew the plans for Gauri Lankesh’s assassination.

Based on the information given by the SIT, Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra raided the house of Vaibhav Raut on August 10, 2018, an SS sympathiser and a member of Hindu Govansh Raksha Samiti, and recovered at least eight country-made bombs, along with other explosives and literature of the SS. 

Confessions of recently arrested Rajesh Bangera in the case of Lankesh shows that the investigations in all the four cases must be carried out together, and not independently. Bangera has confessed to have trained Rudra Patil, Akolkar, Pawar, Tawade in using arms. He has further informed the SIT that he had joined a Maharashtra-based organisation in 1997, and its chief had made it compulsory for its members to learn to use arms. Even though he left the organisation in 2009, he stayed in touch with the organisation and that is how he was approached by Amol Kale. Kale and Amit Degwekar had approached him in 2011 to train a few young boys.

Bangera’s confession yet again highlights the need to investigate all the four cases together. The SIT investigation reports in the case of Gauri Lankesh are revealing the fact that all the accused and arrested so far are connected in some way or the other.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The post Hindutva Terror: Story of the Common Link Between the Four Murders appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The post Right-wing groups can’t deny existence of Hindu terrorism: Kamal Haasan appeared first on SabrangIndia.