The “Hindutva terror” imprints in the Ajmer Dargah blast case and their link with Makka Masjid Blast case have became stronger with the arrest of the third suspect Vishnu Prasad Patidar on Saturday (May 1), allegedly associated with RSS and Abhinav Bharat.
Vishnu, arrested from his home village Khardonkala in Shajapur district of Madhya Pradesh, is a close aide of ‘RSS man’ Chandrashekar, arrested on April 30. Vishnu has emerged as a strong link between Makka Masjid Blast and Ajmer Dargah Blast. ATS Rajasthan has identified fourth accused also and has sent a team to nab the ‘master mind’ who has gone underground after the arrest of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Col. Purohit in Malegaon blast case. Devendra Gupta, the first accused arrested by ATS Rajasthan, has reportedly provided fresh leads and revealed the name of a cleric and his whereabouts in the Modasa region of Gujarat.
Vishnu Prasad has allegedly procured mobile phones and SIM cards used in the terror strikes in both cases. CBI Director Ashwani Kumar on May 3 confirmed the “link” in two blast cases in the year 2007. He is reported as saying: “There is a link between the Ajmer blast and Makka Masjid blast.”
A joint team of ATS, CBI and central security agencies were questioning Devendra Gupta and Chandrashekar, in connection with their involvement in the attack in Hyderabad. ATS sources revealed that two accused arrested last week Chandrashekhar and Devendra were directly involved in the planning and execution of the Ajmer blast, while Vishnu Prasad Patidar was a member of the terror module affiliated to Abhinav Bharat.
In the meanwhile the CJM of Ajmer has granted permission to ATS for conducting narco analysis, brain mapping and lie detector tests on Devendra for getting crucial information from him as he is not satisfactorily cooperating with the investigating team.
Vishnu was earlier interrogated in last October when the ATS came to know that he was using the same mobile phone which was used for triggering the blast at the Dargah. But no action was taken then due to political compulsions. Rajasthan Home Minister Shanti Dhariwal on May 2 alleged that the state police under former chief minister Vasundhara Raje of the BJP kept the involvement of Hindutva outfit under wraps.
The State Home Minister said the role of the all three arrested suspects was known to the police days after the blast. But the investigation was obfuscated in an attempt to hush up the involvement of right wing Hindutva organisations Abhinav Bharat and RSS. He said the direction of investigation was given a deliberate twist to suit the rulers of the day. The findings that the suspects had links with Hindutva outfits were uncomfortable for the BJP regime, he alleged.
“Not only did they (the BJP) scuttle the investigation in Rajasthan, the party also tried to botch up the case in Madhya Pradesh,” Dhariwal said. He added that the probe into the involvement of the right wing outfits also pointed in the direction of one Sunil Joshi, an RSS District Paracharak. He was also involved in Malegaon blasts and was a confident of Sadhvi Pragya Thakur. Joshi was accused in a murder case and was shot dead after he came out from jail on bail.
He said as the bosses in the police establishment knew what the BJP political leadership wanted, they systematically planted stories of the involvement of the Bangladesh and Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islam (HuJI) in the Ajmer blast, the police sources alleged.
After a gap of about two and a half years of the blast, Chandrashekhar Barod was arrested in Madhya Pradesh and brought to Jaipur on April 30. It was through Barod’s SIM card that the ATS came to know about his proximity to Devendra Gupta, who was nabbed in Ajmer on April 28 as he was trying to flee in his Scorpio. Gupta had assumed the fake identity of Babu Lal Yadav to procure four SIM cards from Jamtara in Jharkhand. Four mobiles were traced through the IMEI of Barod’s mobiles. These belonged to Vinod Patidar, Vishnu Patidar, Barod’s wife Sharda and Ram Narayan.
Sources claimed that Police were aware that Barod had close links with Pragya Singh Thakur, but the investigations did not move in the right direction due to political pressure. Pragya is an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case and has been in jail.
According to the sources after collecting the details of the four SIM cards, the ATS summoned Barod, Vinod and Vishnu to a rest house at Shajapur on October 19, 2009. Barod did not turn up and the other two did not divulge much. Thereafter, the ATS kept under vigil the calls of Barod’s wife and his sister. This revealed Barod’s role. The ATS summoned him again on October 24, 2009. But after being grilled, he managed to give the ATS the slip. In February this year, the ATS grilled Barod again but could not extract much information. This prompted the ATS to seek permission for his narco analysis. But his brother moved the court and got a stay order on March 4 for six weeks.
Immediately after the blast, the state police had claimed that it had found a SIM card from an unexploded bomb and it would help them trace the culprits. Sources alleged that the special operations group (SOG) investigators had indeed got the details of the SIM card and had even established a Madhya Pradesh connection. The investigators had also collected the call details relating to the SIM, they said. But since the HuJI angle was propagated within hours of the incident by the then Union Home Minister Mr. Shiva Raj Patil, his Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta (said to be sympathetic to saffron brigade) and the IB, the investigation took an altogether different direction. It is alleged that Mr. Patil, Mr. Gupta and IB were more interested in raising finger against terror groups identified with Muslim names and operating from neighboring countries instead of nabbing real conspirators.
The Indian Express reports from Hyderabad: arrested on Saturday evening in connection with the Ajmer Dargah sharif blast by the Rajasthan Police, Vishnu Prasad is believed to have played a major role in the Makka Masjid attack also. According to investigators, Prasad not only provided the SIM card used to trigger the blast at the Makka Masjid on May 18, 2007, but also conducted the recce of the Charminar area and provided photographs and route map, as well as identified the spot where the bomb was to be placed at the mosque.
Officials believe that unlike the Ajmer blast, in which his role was dormant, Prasad played a major role in the run-up to the Makka Masjid blast, which happened five months before the attack at Ajmer. He is believed to have given directions during his initial recce of Hyderabad, until a team joined him. Prasad briefed the team and probably left before the blast. Officials say that two others who were arrested by the Rajasthan ATS in connection with the Ajmer blast were probably not involved in the Makka Masjid operation, and that it was an entirely different team.
After the Ajmer blast on October 11, 2007, the CBI had found that the SIM cards used in phones to trigger the blast in the Dargah and in the Makka Masjid belonged to the same series.
A CBI team headed by Ashok Tiwari of Special Crime-II today questioned Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Srikant Purohi in jail but it could not be immediately known whether they were able to establish the connection between Malegaon, Ajmer and Makka Masjid attacks and if Purohit was Prasad’s handler while he was in Hyderabad.
ATS of Maharashtra Police under slain chief Hamant Karkare had established way back in 2008 these blasts, along with Samjhota Express blasts were handiwork of same Hindutva Terror module comprising Pragya, Col. Purohit and others.
Though the Rajasthan ATS had managed to identify at least four persons involved in the Ajmer blast, the trail had run cold in the Makka Masjid case as no suspects were named by the CBI.
[The writer is General Secretary Forum for Civil Rights, and can be contacted at syyedagha@hotmail.com]