Investigators believe that the Sanatan Sanstha activists who were killed while allegedly planting bombs in Goa during Diwali celebrations last month were plotting to fan communal tensions by misleading the police through items they wanted to leave behind at the site: a shopping bag from a shop in ‘Khan Market’, Delhi, a bottle of traditional perfume popular among Muslims and an empty bag of branded Basmati rice on which all the words were in Urdu. The items were recovered by police from the site of the crude bomb blast in Margao on October 16 in which two Sanatan members, Malgounda Patil and Yogesh Naik, were killed. It was found after investigations and the subsequent arrest of two men suspected to be linked to Patil and Naik that they were allegedly carrying these items to leave them behind at the blast site and signal a Muslim hand. The latest arrest of 20-year old Dhananjay Ashtekar, an engineering student from Khed in Ratnagiri is also associated with Sanstha.
“The Hindu rightwing group Sanatan Sanstha, five of whose associates have been booked in connection with the Diwali-eve blast in Goa, is a threat to the entire nation, state Home Minister Ravi Naik said on October 13. “Their threat is not to Goa alone, but to entire Bharat. They first tried it (conspiracy to explode bombs) in Maharashtra and now they have tried to carry out blasts in many places in Goa,” the Minister added.