Fridays hold special importance for Muslims the world over. But do they mean so to Indian Muslims, too. Of course, they do. But some Fridays have proved fatal to them, thanks to the Hindutva history-sheeters’ bid to wipe them off the surface of plural Bharat. This fact is nothing new as the community at the receiving end knew it for certain who had been behind the targeted blasts on Fridays. But now once again it has come from the horse’s mouth. RSS members Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma, who were arrested by the CBI in the Makka Masjid blast case, attempted to plant bombs in Makka Masjid on May 4 and May 11, 2007 (both Fridays) before finally succeeding on May 18, again a Friday.
The list of accused in the Makka Masjid blast case includes RSS members Ramchandra Kalsangra alias Ramji, Sandeep Dange, and Sunil Joshi, who hailed from Madhya Pradesh and was shot dead by unknown assailants on December 29, 2007, months after the blasts in Hyderabad and Ajmer. It is significant that the CBI petition has referred to all five of them as RSS members. The killing of Sunil Joshi is mysterious and needs to be probed.
Earlier also, many towns in Maharashtra like Parbhani (November 21, 2003), Purna (August 27, 2004), Jalna (August 27, 2004), and Malegaon (September 8, 2006) witnessed blasts on Fridays. The bombs that exploded during bomb-making process on April 6, 2006 in Nanded were supposed to explode at the Aurangabad mosque on Friday, April 7. The planning of the perpetrators was so strategic that all these blasts occurred between 1.45 p.m. to 2.00 p.m. after the Friday prayers to ensure maximum casualty of Muslims as their attendance during this period is maximum.
The July 19, 2006 Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), Bangalore report (No/FSL/4876/FPS/187/2006) of narco-analysis and brain-mapping conducted on Hindutva activists, reveals that the accused in all these blasts were being aided by state-level VHP and Bajrang Dal officials to execute bomb blasts at mosques in the State.
The confessions these Sangh Parivar activists made during the said narco-analysis and brain-mapping are revealing and eye-opening rather alarming and can serve as backgrounder to the ongoing investigations into the Hindutva terror that is out to spoil peace and destroy the plural structure of Bharat. Himansu Panse, accused in Nanded blast confessed that “bomb attacks outside mosques are the only way of safeguarding Hindutva”. Another accused in both Parbhani and Nanded blasts, Sanjay alias Bhaurao Choudhari said to the FSL that “a Bajrang Dal leader [Balaji Pakharia] called me not to be scared. He promised to get me out of jail at the earliest”.
Now that the Centre is considering the feasibility of a combined probe into the blasts at Makka Masjid, Ajmer Dargah, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express, suspected to have been carried out by the Hindutva groups, it would be in the fitness of things to include into the probe the earlier blasts the shook the Maharashtra towns.