Mail Today, 8 February 2011
Saffron blast funder says Indresh is Joshi’s killer
By Sudhanshu Mishra in Jaipur
BHARAT Mohanlal Rateshwar alias Bharat Bhai, who is believed to have financed several blasts with a Hindutva imprint, has been singing like a canary after his arrest by the Rajasthan Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Friday.
Among Rateshwar’s many disclosures in his confessional statement is the mention of slain RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi as the perpetrator of the October 2007 Ajmer Sharif blast. Furthermore, he names senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar as the mastermind of Joshi’s murder, corroborating co- accused Swami Asimanand’s version.
Rateshwar, 42, whom the ATS listed as one of its witnesses in the Ajmer blast chargesheet submitted in October last year, was picked up from his hometown of Valsad in Gujarat on Friday and produced before an Ajmer court the following day. Both he and Swami Asimanand were sent on remand till February 11.
Joshi — allegedly behind the Ajmer, Malegaon and Mecca Masjid blasts — was shot in Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas town on December 29, 2007. Harshad Solanki is one of those accused of killing Joshi. Solanki is already behind bars in connection with the Ajmer blast.
Solanki, 32, was allegedly one of those four persons who were sharing a room with Joshi at the time of his murder and had been missing after the incident.
He was going by the aliases Raj, Munna and Dari Bhai. According to the Rajasthan ATS, he is also a prime accused in the 2004 Vadodara Best Bakery case.
Rateshwar’s statement was recorded under sections 161 and 164 of the CrPC and submitted before the court along with the chargesheet in the Ajmer blast case. He said immediately after coming to know about Joshi’s death from one Anandraj on the night of the RSS pracharak’s murder and then from newspapers the following day, he rang up Pragya Singh (accused in the Malegaon blast). She confirmed that the killing had taken place.
From the photograph published in the newspapers, he came to know that Joshi was the person whom he knew as Manoj, Rateshwar revealed. Then he rang up Swami Asimanand who said that he was upset by the murder.
Asimanand told him “Yeh sab kaam Indreshji ka hai, aur ye Indreshji Sangh wale hain jo use pasand nahi karte the (this is the handiwork of RSS leader Indresh Kumar who didn’t like Joshi),” the statement said.
Rateshwar also told the ATS that Joshi rang him up late on the evening of October 11, 2007 (the day of the Ajmer blast) saying: “ Hamne patakhe phor diye hain ( we have burst the crackers).” Initially he failed to comprehend the message, but when he saw the news about the blast on TV he called Joshi back to verify whether he was alluding to the blast. Joshi replied in the affirmative and asked him to convey the news to Swami Asimanand.
According to the statement recorded on October 11, 2010, nine days before the ATS filed the chargesheet in the Dargah case, Rateshwar said after working in Dubai and Canada for over seven years he returned to India to spread the message of Swami Vivekanand. He was looking for a piece of land to get a house built near Mumbai. He got the plot in Valsad through one Dhansukh Bhai who introduced him to Swami Asimanand for the purpose of the land purification rites for his house in 1999.
Rateshwar had organised a photo exhibition of Swami Vivekanand at Asimanand’s Shabridham ashram in 2006 where he was introduced to Pragya Singh, Joshi and 5- 6 other activists of the RSS. At Swami Asimanand’s behest, Rateshwar hosted Manoj (Joshi) several times at his residence at Valsad.
The ATS is of the view that Rateshwar was involved in the planning, execution and funding of the terror acts.
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