The Times of India
Noteworthy find leaves ATS in tizzy
1 Mar 2009, 0133 hrs IST, Mateen Hafeez, TNN
MUMBAI: The anti-terrorism squad (ATS) is on the lookout for the person who came to a grocery shop at Yeola in Nashik and left behind a Rs-10 note that had a rubber stamp on it, saying `Bharat ko Hindu Rashtra Banao (Turn India into a Hindu State)'.
The note was first found by the shop owner two days ago and the ATS was immediately informed of it.
The "plan'' to make India a "Hindu rashtra'' came to light recently after the ATS arrested 11 people in connection with the blast at Malegaon on September 29, 2008. The accused, including a Lt Col Prasad Purohit (serving officer), Shankaracharya Dayanand Pandey, sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and retired Maj Ramesh Upadhyay, had allegedly conspired to convert India into a Hindu rashtra with the help of like-minded people in Japan, Israel, south Korea, Bhutan, Nepal and Cambodia.
Additional commissioner of police, ATS, Param Bir Singh, confirmed the finding of the currency. "We have ordered our Nashik unit to probe the matter. We will get the report soon,'' he said. An ATS team went to the residence of Asadullah Khan, the grocery shop owner, in Yeola and recorded his statement. However, Khan could not identify the buyer who had given him the note after a purchase.
According to a source, the police are still clueless about who had stamped the currency with the inflammatory words. The officers suspect that it could be the handiwork of a radical organisation that openly supported Pandey and Purohit's "cause'' of making India a Hindu rashtra.
"We are working on it and trying to trace the origin of this stamped line. It seems some people are playing mischief,'' said an officer. The conspiracy meetings of Malegaon bomb blasts and a Hindu nation were conducted at Deolali and Nashik, which are hardly 50 km from Yeola.
mateen.hafeez@timesgroup.com
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