Kamal Chauhan RSS activist who planted the Samjhauta Train Bomb sees himself as hero

From: Indian Express

‘Blast suspect sees himself as hero'

Rahul Tripathi : Ahmedabad, Mon Feb 20 2012, 12:39 hrs

The arrest of Kamal Chauhan, a former RSS worker, five years after the Samjhauta Express blast, shows that the investigators may still have a lot of ground to cover. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which took over the Samjhauta blast case in 2010, took almost two years to identify Chauhan as one of the bombers who planted explosives on the train.

All this while, Chauhan had been living in his Moorkheda village near Indore, where he owned several acres of land and was popularly called Bhaisaheb. The investigators described Chauhan, in his late 20s, as someone of “tough physical and mental build”. “He showed no signs of remorse; instead, he thinks of himself as a hero,” says a senior NIA official.

After the arrest of Swami Aseemanand, the NIA had claimed that the blast was the handiwork of saffron terror outfits. The other key suspects—Sandeep Dange, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Ashok alias Ashwini Chauhan—are still on the run while Sunil Joshi is dead. It was Swami Aseemanand who floated a “bomb ka badla bomb” theory to avenge the attacks on Hindu temples.

During his school days, Chauhan was a regular at RSS shakhas. It was in one of these shakhas that he reportedly met Dange. After he failed to clear his class VIII, he dropped out of school and stopped going to RSS shakhas, but he kept in touch with Dange.

Chauhan reportedly told his investigators that the bombs used on the train were brought to Delhi by different people. He was tasked with carrying one of the bombs from Indore on train. Before deciding to plant the explosives, Chauhan, along with 10 others, attended regular training sessions at the Bagli-Dewas camp in Madhya Pradesh. At the first training programme in January 2006, Kalsangra allegedly trained Chauhan and others on using bombs. Chauhan also claimed that they were made to fire using air pistols and .32 pistols.

To coordinate the attacks, three groups were formed. The first was of people who would motivate youths for the missions and provide shelter, the second of members who would procure raw materials for fabricating the bombs, and the third to plant them. Chauhan and others who were trained at the Dewas camp were part of the third group.