THE long-awaited verdict on the 2008 Malegaon blast was delivered by a special court in Mumbai. The judgement acquitting all seven accused has come as a blow to the victims and sparked celebrations in the Hindutva camp. For several people, the verdict came on expected lines as during the last 17 years investigating agencies often changed the track, particularly after 2014.
The blast was carried by a group which used a motorcycle. The RDX used in the bomb blew up at a time when the gathering of Muslims was there and killed six people and injured over a hundred people. This happened in the month of Ramadan. Former BJP MP from Bhopal Pragya Singh Thakur, the serving army officer Lt. Col. Prasad Shrikant Purohit, and Retd Major Ramesh Upadhyay were among the seven accused.
Initially the Malegaon blasts case was with the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad. Later National Investigation Agency took it over in 2011. The court observed that there is a strong suspicion about the accused being involved but prosecution has not been able to prove it beyond doubt. So, all the accused were acquitted. There was a strong appreciation of the judgment from the Hindu right-wingers; they also accused the Congress of setting the narrative of saffron terror.
There are some points of the trajectory of investigation which need to be kept in mind while making an opinion. Hemant Karkare, who investigated the case, began with the motor cycle of Sadhvi Pragya, a former ABVP activist. The trail led to other accused.
One of the early blasts in the area was the one which happened in Nanded in April 2006. In the house of Rajkondawar, a bomb exploded. The reason was that in the house a bomb was being assembled and it exploded due to some mishandling. The incident was investigated by a citizens inquiry team under the leadership of former Rashtra Seva Dal President, Dr. Suresh Khairnar. Two youths, Himanshu Panse (27) and Naresh Rajkondwar (26), died on the spot and three others, Yogesh Deshpande (24), Maruti Wagh (23) and Gururaj Tuptewar (25), were badly injured. The flag of Bajrang Dal was flying over the house. At the site, fake beard and moustache and pajama kurta were also seen.
Around this time some explosions also took place in Parbhani, Panvel and Jalna. In the case of Malegaon blast as Karkare was doing meticulous investigation and arresting the accused, the ally of BJP, the united Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray in his paper Saamana wrote: “We spit on Karkare” for his anti-Hindu activity. Lal Krishna Advani, the then leader of opposition, claimed that the accused were tortured in custody.
In the 26/11 2008 Mumbai terror attack, Hemant Karkare was killed, after which Narendra Modi, who was then chief minster of Gujarat, rushed to Mumbai with a cheque of one crore to Karkare’s widow, who politely declined to accept it. The same Modi had called Karkare as doing things against national interests as he had arrested Pragya Thakur and company, now Karkare was being presented as a martyr after his assassination. As he was investigating the Malegaon blast; due to such comments coming from different Hindutva quarters, he went to Julio Ribeiro, his peer, an upright professional. Ribeiro appreciated his forthright work and asked him to continue his work in a professional manner.
After the tragic death of Karkare, Pragya Thaur had her own version of the story. Applauded by leaders of the BJP who surrounded her during a press-conference, Thakur described Karkare as “anti-national” and “dharam virudh” (anti-religion). “You won’t believe but I said, ‘tera sarvanash hoga’ [You will be destroyed],” she said. “Just after sawa mahina [one and a quarter month], terrorists killed him.”
In the other cases of terror blasts (Ajmer, Mecca Masjid and Samjhauta Express) Swami Aseemanand was arrested. After his arrest he confessed to his crimes in front of a metropolitan magistrate. The confession was voluntary and was recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code at Tis Hazari courts in Delhi. Swami’s statement was recorded after 48 hours of judicial custody, to ensure that no sort of pressure or intimidation worked on the mind of the confessor. In this statement he confessed that he and other Hindu activists were involved in bombings at Muslim religious places because they wanted to answer every Islamist terror act with “a bomb for bomb’’ policy.
A bit later he retracted the statement saying that this was given under coercion. It came as a lot of surprise as one knows that the statements given in front of police authorities can be under pressure or coercion but in front of a judge it is another matter. His 48-hour judicial custody was enough to consider all aspects of the issues involved. It seems more of a turning around, an afterthought to protect his associates and the parent organisation. Swami, after accepting the legal assistance; retracted the statement.
These confessions were published in The Caravan and a lot of turmoil was created. Immediately Swami went on to retract the content of the interviews he gave to the reporter of The Caravan. The reporter and the editor of the magazine stood by their version and also released the parts of the audio tapes to authenticate the interview’s contents. This Caravan story not only reconfirmed most of what Swami had confessed in the court but added other dimensions also. The Caravan report points out (The Believer: Swami Aseemanand’s radical service to the Sangh, by Leena Gita Reghunath ( 1 February 2014),
The other major verdict in recent times was that related to train blasts in Mumbai. In this the Muslim accused were released, declared not guilty and the state government immediately appealed the judgement. In the Malegaon judgement, there is a wide celebration in the right-wing camp and no talk of appealing against it by the government. Interestingly, just before the announcement of the judgement Home Minister Amit Shah declared that a Hindu can never be a terrorist, thereby associating terrorism to religion. He deliberately forgot Nathuram Godse (Mahatma Gandhi’s killer), Dhanu (Rajiv Gandhi’s killer) and so many other terrorists whose religion is Hindu. But surely terrorism has nothing to do with any religion.
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Ram Puniyani is an eminent author, activist and a former professor at IIT Mumbai. The views expressed here are author’s personal and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them.
