Bomb blasts investigation leads to Abhinav Bharat ideologue from Bengal

The Telegraph, November 20 , 2010

Mosque bomb trail leads to Bengal Swami

OUR BUREAU & PTI

Nov. 19: A suspected Abhinav Bharat ideologue from Hooghly who floated a front to reverse alleged conversion by Christian missionaries in Gujarat and had Narendra Modi at one of his events has been arrested over the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad.

Jatin Chatterjee, a native of Kamarpukur in the Bengal district with a Master’s degree in science from Burdwan University, is known as Swami Asimanand among his followers.

The name of the 59-year-old, who is believed to change his appearance frequently, also cropped up in the Ajmer blast case of the same year. Rajasthan’s anti-terror squad (ATS) is probing that attack.

Chatterjee was picked up by the CBI this morning from Uttarakhand’s Hardwar, where he had been living allegedly under a fake identity. A passport issued by the regional passport office in Calcutta, a ration card and a voter card issued by the local authorities in Hardwar were recovered from him.

Although his name had surfaced during the investigation of the Mecca Masjid blast, the investigating agency was hamstrung because of the lack of information on his appearance, sources said.

A clear trail began to emerge after the CBI questioned two Ajmer blast accused — Sandeep Darge and Ram Chadra Kalsangra alias Ramji — in connection with the Hyderabad attack of May 2007 in which 16 worshippers died.

Chatterjee’s name had also surfaced during the investigations into the 2008 Malegaon blasts — blamed on Abhinav Bharat — after the Maharashtra ATS recovered the phone number of Chatterjee’s driver from Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, a key member of the hardline outfit already arrested in the case.

Chatterjee has been either underground or posing as another person since the Malegaon probe started. But back in 1998, as a firebrand reconversion campaigner in Gujarat’s tribal-dominated Dangs district, he was a household name.

Hindu Jagran Manch, an outfit he floated, was fighting what Chatterjee and his followers claimed were conversions by Christian missionaries.

A number of Christian prayer halls were burnt down, allegedly by his outfit, at the height of the reconversion campaign. The violence had prompted then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to visit the area.

One of the high points of the Manch’s activities was a fair that it organised along with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in 2006. Chief minister Narendra Modi was among the prominent political figures who had attended the event. Chatterjee, who had an ashram there, even built a temple to Sabri Mata, the local deity.

Before going to Gujarat, Chatterjee was said to have worked with tribals — through the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram — in Bengal’s Purulia, Bastar (now in Chhattisgarh but then in Madhya Pradesh) and even in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Chatterjee was brought later today to Delhi, where a city court allowed the CBI his transit remand and asked the agency to produce him in a Hyderabad court within 48 hours.