Malegaon investigation under attack from parivar (lack of cooperation from Indian army)

Outlook Magazine, December 1, 2008

EXCLUSIVE: MALEGAON BLASTS

A Much Tested Squad
The parivar is at the ATS trident & tongs, but even the army is slow in cooperating ...

by Smruti Koppikar

"Hemant Karkare is a good Hindu, he is doing only his dharma, fulfilling his duty. To even suggest political pressure and fabrication of the case is ridiculous."
-Julio Ribeiro, Ex-Mumbai commissioner, Punjab DGP

"I find it very difficult to believe that an IPS officer can concoct a case or that the Government of India is foolish enough to ask the police to fabricate it."
-M.N. Singh, Former police commissioner, Mumbai

"Every bit of the investigation is being overseen by courts. People running it down are responsible leaders. Why abuse your own system, with which you may have to work?"
-Satish Sahney, Former Mumbai commissioner

***
For the saffron parivar, if there is a villain in the September 29 Malegaon blasts, it is the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). Its investigators, they say, have played out the script laid by vested interests in the UPA government. Hence the arrest of Sadhvi Pragya, Lt Col Prasad Purohit and some Hindutva activists.

While accusations from the BJP, RSS and Bajrang Dal leaders are along predictable lines, ATS investigations have hit a stumbling block from an unlikely quarter: the army establishment. ATS officials have told Outlook that their investigation could have been smoother and faster had the army been more cooperative in providing the information they have been asking for. For instance:

* Purohit forged documents to get a fake identity card for Sudhakar Chaturvedi, one of the accused, from the military cantonment at Deolali, near Nashik. The ATS wants to know if Purohit did this on his own, had help or if there were others he had similarly "helped."

* Purohit also used his position and access to procure an arms licence for a revolver Chaturvedi owned from the army quota. The army hasn't confirmed this yet nor has it refuted issuing a licence. The ATS wants to know who else in the force could have helped Purohit in this.

* The explosives and weapons used for training on several occasions were sourced by Purohit and stored in a gym he used while in Pune. The ATS wants to know if small quantities of weapons or ammunition of any kind went missing from the army establishments and depots Purohit was attached to or had access to. But they haven't been provided any information yet, say ATS sources.

* Narco tests on Purohit revealed that he was in Mumbai on August 1 this year and set up a meeting with VHP leader Praveen Togadia at a Mumbai hotel. Togadia has denied such a meeting but investigators want to know if Purohit was granted leave that day or if his superiors knew of his 'Mumbai mission'.

* ATS sources also allege that the army did not provide the officer's leave records immediately for investigators to correlate the timing of his leave and training camps.

* The ATS was unable to recover Purohit's laptop for days after he was taken into custody though he had it with him in Panchmarhi, where he was last posted. ATS sources fear it may have been tampered with.

* ATS sources say they have had to backtrack on their request to scan and interrogate three other serving officers whose names came up during the interrogation of those arrested in the case.

* The ATS would also like the army to share a list of officers and men who were in close contact with Purohit at two stages—one during his stint in Jammu and Kashmir and later when he was posted at Nashik-Deolali.

Fearing it might possibly open up a can of worms, this information has not been made available to investigators so far.

# The army took its time, allege ATS sources, to furnish details of the Secret Service Fund accessed by Purohit. Purohit has told the court that he has sensitive information which he would not reveal without permission from the army. And senior army officers say that the defence establishment would not like Purohit to share such information with the investigators.

This recalcitrance from army quarters notwithstanding, the ATS is pressing on with its investigation. Its strategy is to follow the law strictly, especially sections 154 to 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code, in the process of investigation and present it to the court. The intention is to sew up all the loose ends to make the case as watertight as possible.

On its radar currently is Nitin Joshi, who reportedly said Purohit told him about pilfering RDX. There is also Rakesh Dhawde, a Pune-based counterfeit arms dealer who is believed to have had a role in the 2003 blasts at Jalna, Parbhani and other towns. He is also believed to have had links with Purohit and other Abhinav Bharat functionaries, and is said to have played a key role in a Bajrang Dal training camp in 2006.

The BJP, of course, dismisses this as a "fishing expedition", as its spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad put it. Meanwhile, on November 20, the Shiv Sena filed a writ against the ATS in the Bombay High Court, terming it as biased and asking that the Malegaon blast case be transferred to the state CID. For the ATS, if investigating the bomb blast from a single clue—a battered and half-burnt motorcycle carrying the bomb—was tough, even tougher is this constant attack on its competence and credibility, says a senior officer. But ATS chief Hemant Karkare is not a man to give up easily. Through all the name-calling and allegations, he has been exhorting his men to stick to the job and forget the rest.

The last six weeks have indeed tested Karkare like no other time in his career, marked by his certitude, low-profile approach and passion for always doing the correct thing. He, like his teams, has hardly taken a day off since the ATS began investigations. He has travelled across states, spent days on interrogations, nights on collating information, hours on weighing clues and dispatching teams to work on them, supervising the legal procedure and so on.

The ATS, assert BJP and Sangh leaders, has no evidence, assert BJP and Sangh leaders. The informal parivar network is, in fact, hard at work to spread the word: that there is no physical or material evidence. The agency is also being charged with 'torture' of the accused, and compelling them to 'confess'. Both Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya have alleged that the ATS has, or intends to, harm them.

"This is exactly the strategy other accused in other blasts use," says former Mumbai commissioner and Punjab DGP Julio Ribeiro. "When they (the Muslim accused) said this, the BJP dismissed it as a ploy to derail investigation and demanded harsher methods or laws. Now the BJP backs the so-called torture charges." The parivar probably doesn't realise that the same agency has investigated blasts across Maharashtra in which Muslim groups have been involved. It was equally methodical and severe on them.

And the agency isn't being lenient on the Malegaon accused either. It has slapped MCOCA or the Maharashtra Control

of Organised Crime Act on all the 10 accused. This means the Malegaon blast case will now be tried in the special designated MCOCA court in Mumbai rather than in the magistrate courts in Nashik and Pune.

It also means this case and the accused will be treated like the accused in other blast cases as far as the framing of charges is concerned.

As for lack of evidence, Karkare says, "There is enough evidence and it will be presented in the court." The motorbike, of course, remains a crucial piece of evidence and everything else is built around it, but the ATS says it also has evidence on the group's network, its meetings and training camps, calls and messages, and financial transactions. The ATS has also lined up around 50 witnesses so far. "There is substantive evidence, corroboration of statements and linkages between all accused that are irrefutable," says an ATS officer. Besides, elements of the case are still being pieced together and some arrests are yet to be made. Parts of the "hardware assembly of the blasts", as investigators call it, are falling into place.

But till that evidence stands the scrutiny of the courts and the accused are pronounced guilty, the parivar will continue to vilify the ATS, paint the accused as victims and stymie investigations. This was best illustrated by what transpired outside the judicial magistrate's court in Pune on November 19 when officers of the ATS escorted the accused in. Purohit & Co were showered with rose petals and greeted with slogans. Activists of some right-wing Hindu organisations hailed him as a "hero of the Hindus" and stoutly denounced the ATS for its supposed "anti-Hindu" bias. The officers kept a straight face but some wondered if the sloganeering crowds had got their heroes and villains mixed up...