Gujarat was the hub for all the Hindutva terror attacks in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh

Indian Express, Oct 27 2010

The Gujarat connection

by Kamaal Saiyed

While the blasts to “avenge the killings of Hindus” happened in (Ajmer) Rajasthan, (Malegaon) Maharashtra, and (Mecca Masjid) Andhra Pradesh, it is Gujarat — more specifically South Gujarat — that has emerged as a hub for the conspirators. It is from and to Gujarat that they kept flitting, while planning and plotting the conspiracy. Malegaon’s copycat blast, leading to a death near a mosque in Modasa, a North Gujarat town, had the Gujarat Police reportedly stonewalling the leads. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has since taken over the probe.

The chargesheet filed by the Rajasthan ATS in the Ajmer 2007 blast case names two people linked to Gujarat: Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, now in jail for her alleged role in the Malegaon blast, and Swami Aseemanand, now on the run. While Pragya’s family is based in Surat, it was Aseemanand who cultivated South Gujarat’s tribal region, stationing himself inThe Dangs in the 1990s to take on the Christian missionaries there.

A Bengali by birth, after a brief stint with the Ramakrishan Mission, Aseemanand entered Gujarat with a Sangh Parivar affiliate, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. He started work at Waghai in The Dangs, which became the hotbed of the anti-missionary movement. He was one of those who organised the Shabarikumbh Mela in 2006. It is at the mela, at Subir in The Dangs, that the key organisers, including Aseemanand, allegedly gave concrete shape to the plans to “avenge Hindu killings”, while reportedly networking with the Sangh Parivar affiliates in the state.

For Aseemanand, the location of the district was perfect for the execution of the plan: it borders Maharashtra, with a direct road link to Malegaon. It was in The Dangs that he had reportedly vowed that the “threat” from Islamic jehad and Christian conversion were the two challenges to the Hindu samaj and both need to be confronted. After Pragya’s arrest, he disappeared from the area.

The police say nobody has approached them in the case. Surat Range IG A K Singh, who is spearheading the Naxal-linked arrests in the state, particularly in South Gujarat, said, “We know that many investigating agencies are looking for Aseemanand for his involvement in the Ajmer and Malegaon blasts. He developed his base at the Shabari Mata temple in The Dangs. We have done our homework, he has not been spotted in the area for a long time. Nobody has sought our help to locate him.”

Aseemanand, fluent in Hindi, English, Gujarati, and the Dangi dialect, wooed the tribals arduously. According to sources, he is still in touch with his aides in Subir, and visited the area twice. But he no longer remains the trustee of the Shabari Sewa Samit Trust. The Trust, earlier presided over by Jayanti Kewat, a known saffron affiliate in the region, went in for a complete change a few months ago. Kewat, a resident of Navsari district, resigned, with new faces like the district’s first BJP MLA, Vijay Patel, Aseemanand’s close associate Kishor Gavit’s wife Nirmala taking up the office-bearers’ posts. Kishore had introduced Aseemanand to Vijay and other BJP leaders of the area. Now all of them plead ignorance regarding his whereabouts in South Gujarat and in Maharashtra’s Dhulia and Navapur — places he frequented. However, all of them speak of him with respect.

Said Kishor Gavit, “He came to Subir village. He is a genuine man, down to earth and polite. He addressed public meetings at different villages. It’s been a long time since I saw him in the Dangs.”

Cross over to Maharashtra, and in Navapur, a border town seven kilometres from Gujarat and 140 km from Malegaon, Aseemanand is a known name. “He was in Navapur only once, during Dussehra,” said Ganesh Wadnere, a Shiv Sena councillor of Navapur Nagar Parishad who heads the Rashtra Jagruti Seva Manch that hosted Dussehra celebrations in September 2008.

Nilam Pathak, a Navapur-based journalist, recalled that the Swami had told them how Pragya travelled “from Indore to the Shabarikumbh Mela on a motorbike, reaching in the dead of the night”. In Chitpada village in Dhulia, Maharashtra, Aseemanand was the chief speaker at the Hindu Adivasi Hit Raksha Morcha way back in May 2000.

The police, in The Dangs and Modasa, have no leads in the case, nor know of his whereabouts. In the Modasa blast case, the police have filed a summary, while the NIA has taken over material evidence for further testing in Delhi’s Forensic Science Laboratory.