India: Ban on Rightwing Sanatan Sanstha likely; Goa Government funds the organisations activities

From: Tehelka.com, 3 September 2011

MAHARASHTRA

Right-wing outfit may be banned

Sanatan Sanstha will become the 35th organisation to be banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act

Iftikhar Gilani
New Delhi

Once the organisation is banned under the Act, any association with it attracts the jail term up to seven years plus fine


The Home Ministry may impose ban on the Hindu right-wing organisation Sanatan Sanstha, accused involved in a series of bomb blasts, including one in Goa on Diwali-eve in October 2009 that killed two carrying the explosives on a scooter.

A request for banning the outfit set up by Mumbai hypnotist Jayant Balaji Athavale in 1990 with its headquarters near Margao in Goa has come from the Maharashtra Government, citing role of its activists in the blasts in Thane in June 2008 and thereafter at Vashi, Panvel and Ratnagiri.

The Sanstha will become the 35th organisation banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, once the Maharashtra Government furnishes the requisite information sought to notify it among the banned outfits, the Home Ministry sources said.

The Act requires ratification of any ban by a Tribunal headed by a High Court judge and hence the Home Ministry has to have sufficient reasons on record before slapping the ban, the sources said.

Once the organisation is banned under the Act, any association with it attracts the jail term up to seven years plus fine. The 1967 Act was amended since after the repeal of POTA (Prevention of Terrorists Act) in 2004 and again in 2008 to extend it to the terrorist organisations.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), the federal agency set up after 26/11, has already filed the charge-sheet in the case of the Goa blast that killed the two youths suspected to be ferrying the bombs for conducting simultaneous blasts at five place in the state.

It had interrogated Athavale as well as Virendra Marathe running Ramnath Ashram off Margao in January last year after taking over the investigations from the Goa Police which had arrested four persons. The last of the accused persons in the case to be arrested was Prashant Juvekar who was nabbed at Bhusawal in Maharashtra on 31 July last year.

The Act requires ratification of any ban by a Tribunal headed by a High Court judge and hence the Home Ministry has to have sufficient reasons on record before slapping the ban, the sources said.

Athavale had disowned the youths killed and those arrested in the case, claiming they must have acted on their own as his organisation is engaged in scientific study of spirituality and has nothing to do with any criminal activities.

The Goa Government had come under criticism after the incident for funding the outfit's daily Sanatan Prabhat through release of advertisements despite it propagating the idea of the Hindu Rashtra and writing against the minorities.

Iftikhar Gilani is Special Correspondent with Tehelka.com
iftikhar@tehelka.com