The connections between Malegaon 2006 to Modasa 2008 - the role of Hindutva extremists

From: Indian Express

Joining the dots
Rahul Tripathi Posted online: Sun Feb 03 2013, 02:27 hrs

A series of arrests has helped investigators establish the links between some of the most high-profile terror cases involving Hindu extremists—from Malegaon 2006 to Modasa 2008. RAHUL TRIPATHI looks at what the investigators have found so far—and what they haven’t

One cold December morning, Rambalak Dash left his ashram in Chitrakoot on the UP-MP border for a puja he had been called upon to do at a house in Nagada, 50 km from Ujjain. It was 4.30 am when Dash finally reached the house. Only, the puja was a trap laid out by a team of the Madhya Pradesh police and he had walked straight into it. It didn’t take long for the cover to be blown. ‘Rambalak Dash’ was no holy man. He was Rajender Chaudhary, who is allegedly involved in the Samjhauta train blast of 2007, the Mecca Masjid blast (also of 2007) and the Malegaon blast of 2006. During questioning, Chaudhary revealed the name of his associate Dhan Singh—allegedly involved in the Malegaon and Modasa bombings—who lived in another ashram in Chitrakoot under the assumed identity of ‘Laxman Das’. The following day, the police laid out a similar trap for Dhan Singh—the ‘holy man’ was called for a puja—and he too ended up being arrested. Their questioning led to the arrest of three others—Manohar Kumar Singh, Tej Ram and Sudeep Upadhyay—from different parts of Madhya Pradesh.

For the first time since April 2011, when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the probe into the terror cases involving Hindu extremists, investigators have something concrete to work on, something beyond Swami Aseemanand’s confession. After his arrest in November 2010, Aseemanand had, in a statement to the police, said that Hindu extremist groups and RSS leader Indresh Kumar were instrumental in planning and executing the attacks. He had also named Sunil Joshi, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange as “key planners”. But he retracted his statement in May 2011 and the investigators had to start all over again.

The arrests have not only helped the agency unravel multiple plots involving Hindu extremists but also helped them join the dots between some seemingly disparate cases—the bomb attacks on mosques in J&K in 2004, the attack on Delhi University professor SAR Geelani in 2005, the killing of a Muslim youth in Madhya Pradesh in 2006 and the 2007 murder of RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi.

A recent forensic report done by a Hyderabad laboratory established “similarities” between six blasts cases—Malegaon (2006, 2008), Ajmer Sharif (2007), Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad (2007), Modasa in Gujarat (2008) and on board the Samjhauta Express (2006). Forensic experts found that the bomb container, electronic circuit, arming mechanism as well as trigger mechanism in all these blasts were similar.

Suddenly, it was all beginning to fall in place for the investigators.

THE BREAKTHROUGH

It was in October 2008, a month after the second Malegaon blasts, that the Mumbai ATS first announced the role of Hindu extremist groups when they arrested Sadhvi Pragya Singh and a serving colonel of the Indian Army, Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit, for their role in the blasts. Pragya’s motorbike was allegedly used to plant the explosives at Malegaon. Within a month of the arrest, Hemant Karkare, the joint CP heading the probe, died during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, throwing investigations out of gear.

Two years later, in 2010, the Rajasthan ATS, which was probing the 2007 Ajmer Dargah case, arrested Lokesh Sharma and Devendra Gupta, both associated with the RSS. The duo said that it was Aseemanand and former RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi who had convinced them to carry out attacks in Ajmer and Mecca Masjid. This was the first hint that these attacks had a common thread running through them. On November 19, 2010, the CBI arrested Aseemanand from an ashram in Haridwar in Uttarakhand.

Sunil Joshi turned out to be the leader of the group and allegedly coordinated the attacks and managed finances. Further evidence of Indresh’s alleged links with Hindu extremists came up when the police, after Joshi’s murder in December 2007, recovered his telephone diary in which Indresh’s cellphone number was mentioned as “emergency”. Both the NIA and the CBI have not been able to gather clinching evidence against Indresh. The CBI summoned him in 2010, soon after Aseemanand’s arrest. However, the police did not record his statement. Aseemanand’s statement recorded before the magistrate could not nail Indresh either. In May 2011, Aseemanand retracted his statement. But his earlier confession helped nine innocent Muslim youth, who had been arrested for the 2006 Malegaon blasts, get bail.

MORE LEADS

In June 2011, based on Aseemanand’s confession, NIA filed a chargesheet against Aseemanand, Sunil Joshi, Lokesh Sharma, Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra for their role in the 2007 Samjhauta Express blasts.

On February 18, 2007, four suitcases with bombs were placed in unreserved compartments on the Samjhauta Express, of which two exploded while the train was near Panipat in Haryana. The third suitcase exploded while it was being defused and the fourth was recovered unexploded on the tracks near the 15th compartment of the train.

The chargesheet said that it was Sandeep Dange who came up with the proposal to target Samjhauta Express. He and Sunil Joshi selected the train because most of the travellers on this train would have been Pakistani Muslims. The chargesheet quotes Joshi as saying, “For this, we need a different kind of bomb, we need to assemble a variety of chemicals. For a number of simultaneous blasts on a running train, SIM card bombs won’t do.” That’s how Dange, an expert in bomb-making, came to undertake this project.

NIA alleged that Aseemanand assured the group that he would try to contribute funds. Joshi, however, asked him not to worry. He said, “There are others who will give the money.”

After Aseemanand retracted his statement, investigators were working overtime to identify the bombers in the Samjhauta blasts when they arrested Kamal Chauhan in February 2012. Son of a farmer, Kamal is said to be unrepentant about what he had done. He told investigators about the explosives used, the training, team members and the name of others who were with him while he planted explosives on the train.

From Kamal’s revelations, investigators learnt that Lokesh Sharma, arrested for the 2007 Ajmer Dargah blasts, had planted one of the bombs on the train while Kamal had planted the second. Kamal is learnt to have assembled the bombs along with Kalsangra at a rented accommodation near Bengali Chouraha in Indore. Rajender Chaudhary and Amit Chauhan planted the other two suitcases. Amit is the technical brain of the group and is considered close to Ramji Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange. NIA has announced a reward of Rs 5 lakh on Amit while Dange and Kalsangra carry a reward of Rs 10 lakh each.

The five alleged bombers arrested by the NIA so far have proved to be foot soldiers who acted on the directions of Sunil Joshi, Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange. For all the six blasts, Joshi had divided the groups into three different branches. The first layer had financers who were not aware about the men who would eventually plant the bomb. The alleged planters were selected by a second group which coordinated and assembled the bombs. But members of all the groups were bound by a common ideology: they were all associated with religious or Hindu extremist organisations, had “strong anti-minority feelings” and were agitated about jihadi/terrorist attacks on temples—Akshardham (Gujarat), Raghunath Mandir (Jammu) and Sankat Mochan Mandir (Varanasi).

PLANNING, EXECUTION

Investigations have not only brought out the common link between the blasts, starting from the 2006 Malegaon blasts to the 2008 Malegaon blasts, but also revealed the role of Hindu extremist groups in the 2006 Nanded blast. A bomb had gone off at the house of an RSS worker in Nanded in which two people were killed. It later emerged that a group of people in the house were assembling bombs.

According to the NIA, the house in Nanded was part of the logistics that went into planning each of the six terror attacks. The planning began in 2001 and the group led by Sunil Joshi formally met for the first time in Jaipur on October 26, 2005. According to the NIA, RSS leader Indresh Kumar attended this meeting. It was soon after this meeting that Devender Gupta, Lokesh Sharma and Sunil Joshi took the responsibility of arranging mobile phones and SIM cards for all subsequent attacks.

The group purchased 11 SIM cards from two different states—Asansol in West Bengal and Jamtara in Jharkhand—under the assumed name of Babu Lal Yadav. To escape detection, the four mobile phones used in the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Dargah blasts were bought from four different states. The bomb-making techniques were imparted by Sunil Joshi, Kalsangra, Sandeep Dange and Amit Chauhan.

On January 4, 2006, a training camp was organised at Bagli forest area near Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, where more than a dozen volunteers participated. Kalsangra, Sunil Joshi, Lokesh, Chaudhary, Kamal and others attended the camp. Kalsangra trained the group in bomb-making and also gave a demonstration by blasting a bomb on a nearby hillock. All the participants practiced with their air pistols and .32 bore pistols. Another training was conducted at the Karni Singh shooting range at Faridabad, Haryana, in April 2006. According to Chaudhary, a man in army uniform was present at the shooting range. The identity of this person is yet to be established.

According to Aseemanand’s statement to the police, Indresh Kumar allegedly funded the operations while Sunil Joshi managed the logistics. Interrogation of the arrested bombers has revealed that the bombs were ferried in a car for the Ajmer blasts, while for the Samjhauta and the 2006 Malegaon blasts, the bombs and their carriers travelled by train.

The missing links

While the NIA has made several key arrests, the big fish have eluded them so far. The biggest upset was the murder of Joshi, a key link in the terror chain who planned much of the operations. Besides, three key planners—Ramji Kalsangra, Sandeep Dange and Amit Chauhan—with whom the bomb planters were in touch, are absconding.

There are other unanswered questions, such as the source of the explosives and detonators. While investigators suspect that Purohit supplied explosives and arms to carry out these attacks, his link to Joshi and the bombers is yet to be established. With Joshi dead, that task becomes even more difficult. Also, the role of Pragya Singh and Sudhakar Chaturvedi, arrested for 2008 Malegaon blasts, is still not clear.

Besides the forensic report, NIA is relying on the confessions of the arrested bombers. With Aseemanand retracting his statement, the NIA will have to ensure that other witnesses support their case.

The alleged trainings at Bagli and Faridabad in 2006 is a key piece of evidence. However, since the investigators haven’t recovered any travel documents, it will be tough to prove that bombers travelled to a particular destination to plant the explosives.

As with all chases, the endgame could be tough.

Murder of the mastermind

On December 29, 2007, as he was about to sit down for dinner, Sunil Joshi, an RSS pracharak, got a call. Joshi had been living in Dewas, MP, after his return from exile in Gujarat following the 2003 murders of Congress leader Pyare Singh Ninama and his son. Since his two-wheeler had a puncture, he decided to walk down to meet his caller. On the way, he was shot. His four aides, who used to stay with him, were not to be seen again.

Three years later, the Rajasthan ATS arrested Lokesh Sharma and Devender Gupta in the Ajmer blast case. But the picture became clear only after Rajender Chaudhary was arrested late last year. Chaudhary reportedly confessed that he had directions from Lokesh Sharma to fire at Joshi. Interrogations have revealed that Chaudhary fired the first shot, but the pistol got locked after which he fired four shots using a country-made weapon. The NIA has seized both the weapons.

Though the NIA arrested two persons, Balveer Singh and Dileep Jagtap, last week in connection with the murder, the motive remains unclear. One of the theories is that Lokesh Sharma was angry with Joshi for having allegedly made indecent advances to Pragya Singh at a wedding. Lokesh, who treated Pragya as his ‘sister’, decided to take revenge. The MP police’s theory is that a dispute over a liquor shop led to the murder. Investigators are also not ruling out a “bigger conspiracy” in the murder as they suspect that he was killed in order to keep these high-profile cases under wraps.