Mail Today, 23 December 2010
Masjid blast heat on RSS top man
By Dalip Singh in New Delhi
THE CENTRAL Bureau of Investigation ( CBI) issued a notice to top RSS leader Indresh Kumar on Tuesday, asking him to appear before the agency on Thursday in connection with the three- year- old Mecca Masjid ( Hyderabad) blast case.
The notice, served at the RSS headquarters in Jhandewalan, New Delhi, was issued under section 160 of the Criminal Procedure Code ( CrPC), which empowers an investigating agency to summon any person who is witness to or acquainted with circumstances or facts of a case under probe.
Kumar has been an RSS central working committee member since 2007.
RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav confirmed that Kumar has been summoned by the central investigating agency and assured that Kumar would cooperate with the CBI sleuths.
“ We have maintained that we would cooperate in the investigation. We saw it coming since the move is motivated by certain considerations as reflected in the recently held Congress conclave where leaders like Rahul Gandhi gave enough indication of things to come.” Madhav dubbed the CBI notice as an attempt to “ damage the reputation of individuals and target organisations like the RSS”. The premier investigative agency’s move to question the influential Sangh leader comes a month after Naba Kumar Sarkar, popularly known as Swami Asimanand, was arrested from Haridwar.
Asimanand is believed to have divulged crucial information on the larger conspiracy of the Hindutva terror, which the CBI is working on to unravel the entire plot in Hyderabad blast case.
Mail Today was the first to report on July 15 that Kumar was on the radar of the investigating agencies probing the terror strikes at the Mecca Masjid and the Ajmer Sharif Dargah.
Later, the Rajastjan ATS named Kumar in the voluminous chargesheet filed in a Jaipur court on October 22.
The chargesheet said that the senior RSS leader, towards the end of October or early November, 2005, addressed a secret conclave in Jaipur which was attended by seven suspected terrorists.
Lokesh Sharma, Ramji Kalsangre, Sandeep Dange, Shivam Dhakad, Samandar and Pragya Singh Thakur – an accused in the Malegaon blast – were invited to Jaipur on October 31, 2005 by RSS office bearer Sunil Joshi.
Joshi was found murdered in mysterious circumstances in Dewas on December 29, 2007.
In Jaipur, the suspected terrorists stayed under assumed identities in room no 26 of the C Scheme Gujarati guesthouse.
“ Indresh Kumar told them that you all should join some religious organisation and start working so that nobody can raise a suspicion.
It should appear that you all are on a religious yatra,” the chargesheet written in Hindi alleged.
“ Only after joining a religious organization you all would be successful in achieving your mission,” Kumar is alleged to have advised the seven blast suspects during the secret meeting.
However, the RSS leader has not been made an accused in the Ajmer blast case. The Rajasthan ATS is yet to question Kumar in the Ajmer blast case, despite the fact that state home minister Shanti Kumar Dhariwal had claimed, days after the chargehsheet was filed, that there was enough evidence for interrogating the RSS leader.
The CBI will also have to file a supplementary chargesheet in the Mecca Masjid blast case after their probe on Swami Asimanand’s role in the case is over.
The anti terrorism squad had charged five persons — including Devender Gupta, Lokesh Sharma and Chander Shekhar Lave — for carrying out the blast.
All of them are behind the bars now. Two accused Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangra are still on the run.
