The BJP on Sunday alleged that the inclusion of RSS leader Indresh Kumar’s name in the Ajmer blast chargesheet was a political conspiracy hatched by the Congress. The Congress, on the other hand, asked the saffron party to reflect upon the involvement of people belonging to the Sangh Parivar in terror acts.
It said the disclosure has not come as a surprise.
AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh, who was the first to raise the issue of saffron terror way back in September 2008, said the disclosure was nothing new and that Kumar had been a key strategist behind all terror incidents.
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*ATS Plans To Grill Indresh
*Glaring proof but MP’s eyes wide shut
*Gehlot could do a Togadia to RSS leader & have him arrested
By Mail Today Bureau in New Delhi
The BJP on Sunday alleged that the inclusion of RSS leader Indresh Kumar’s name in the Ajmer blast chargesheet was a political conspiracy hatched by the Congress. The Congress, on the other hand, asked the saffron party to reflect upon the involvement of people belonging to the Sangh Parivar in terror acts.
It said the disclosure has not come as a surprise.
AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh, who was the first to raise the issue of saffron terror way back in September 2008, said the disclosure was nothing new and that Kumar had been a key strategist behind all terror incidents.
“It’s nothing new. Kumar has been a fountainhead of all such activities,” the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister said. In May this year, Singh had written to the Prime Minister, giving details of the involvement various Hindutva outfits in acts of terror.
“By defending Kumar, the BJP has again proved its close ties with radical Hindu elements involved in terrorist activities. First it defended Pragya Thakur, Dayanand Pande and Col Purohit. And now they are defending Kumar,” Singh said.
He added: “I am sure the investigating agencies would have the facts that Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma, Ramji Kalsangra, Sunil Dange and Sunil Joshi had extremely close ties with Kumar.” Kumar’s name figured in the chargesheet filed by the Rajasthan Anti- Terrorist Squad against five accused in the 2007 Ajmer blast. The chargesheet said Kumar had attended a secret meeting held in a Gujarati guesthouse in Jaipur on October 31, 2005, in which six other functionaries of the outfit were also present.
Trashing BJP’s charges, AICC spokesperson Manish Tewari said what the saffron party has said is old hat and does not merit a response. “ The larger question which the BJP needs to reflect upon is as to why its progenitor is involved in activities, which can only be qualified as anti- national,” he said. A sked to respond to RSS’ apprehensions that the Congress was out to split the Sangh, Tewari said the question of splitting the RSS would only arise if we consider it to be a politically or socially legitimate. “ However, it would be in the interest of the country if it ( the RSS) selfdestructs,” he added.
BJP vice- president Kalraj Mishra said the party condemned the attempt by the Congress to defame the organisation.
“ Indresh’s name has figured in the chargesheet under a conspiracy.
We strongly condemn the political conspiracy hatched by the Congress to defame the nationalist organisation, which has been working to safeguard the interests of the nation,” Mishra told By defending Indresh Kumar, the BJP has again proved its ties with radical Hindu elements involved in terror acts — Digvijay Singh, AICC general secretary ‘ ’ reporters in Patna.
Referring to statements against the RSS by Union home minister P. Chidambaram and Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, Mishra said: “ Indresh has been falsely implicated in the case in order to vindicate the stand of the two leaders.” Senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu accused the Congressled UPA of trying to embarrass the BJP politically by framing charges against organisations such as the RSS. “ To cover up its failures, the UPA has adopted a ‘ 3- D formula’ — divert, defame and destabilise the BJP — by using government agencies such as the CBI, antiterrorist squads and other organisations,” he alleged.
Mail Today
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ATS PLANS TO GRILL INDRESH
By Sudhanshu Mishra in Jaipur
THE Rajasthan Anti- Terrorist Squad ( ATS) is all set to interrogate RSS leader Indresh Kumar, who has been named the principal conspirator of the 2007 Ajmer Dargah blast.
A senior officer of the ATS said the investigating agency would grill Kumar soon, adding that the issue of summoning him or visiting his premises for the purpose questioning would be decided in accordance with the prevalent circumstances. Kumar was named in the chargesheet submitted against three of the accused in the Ajmer court on Friday.
The ATS officers are examining the records of the Gujarati Samaj Guest House of Jaipur where Kumar and six other leaders of Hindutva organisations had met on October 31, 2005, to allegedly hatch the plots for attacks on the Ajmer shrine, Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid, Malegaon in Maharashtra, Delhi’s Jama Masjid and the Samjhauta Express train.
Among other things, the ATS is matching the signature on the check- in register of the guest house with the handwriting of late RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi. The investigators had recovered his diary from Devas ( Madhya Pradesh) after he was murdered in mysterious circumstances.
Joshi was shot dead soon after the Ajmer blast that killed three persons and injured over 15.
The ATS is also trying to ascertain the source of the explosives used in the bombs. Chargesheeted accused Lokesh Sharma and Joshi are believed to have procured the explosives from Indore.
According to the ATS, there was a similarity in the explosives used in the blasts in Ajmer and the Samjhauta Express.
The train explosion took place at Diwana near Panipat ( Haryana) in 2007, killing 68 people. In this case, too, the explosives were procured from Indore, the city to which most of the accused in the Ajmer blast case belong.
The ATS has also decided to tighten its noose on Swami Aseemanand who runs an ashram in Gujarat’s Dang district. He was associated with Joshi and the other suspects, including Pragya Singh Thakur — currently in jail in connection with the Malegaon blasts.
Both Joshi and Thakur attended the meeting in Jaipur that was addressed by Kumar.
A highly placed source pointed out that the allegation levelled in the chargesheet that Kumar had attended the Jaipur meeting in 2005 was based on the revelations made by accused Devendra Gupta during interrogation.
Another person whom the ATS may question is Thakur.
Mail Today
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Glaring proof but MP’s eyes wide shut
By Anup Dutta in Bhopal
THE RAJASTHAN government has begun to tighten the noose on Hindutva terror, not sparing even right- wing bigwigs. Most of the names that have cropped up again and again in these cases are from the Malwa region of neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. Yet the BJP- ruled state has chosen to look the other way.
The saffron government just doesn’t appear to be interested in finding out how the accused in the blasts at the Ajmer Dargah, Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid and at Malegaon in Maharashtra are linked to Madhya Pradesh.
While many of the accused belong to the Malwa belt in the western part of the state, others have been nabbed here. The entire region is a traditional RSS ( Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) stronghold.
While it has turned a blind eye in many incidents, the state has inexplicably decided to shut the Sunil Joshi murder case file. The RSS pracharak — thought to have been shot dead in Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas district by his own people in December 2007 — was the main accused in the three terror acts.
“ For us, it’s a closed file though the court has not accepted it. We are keeping our eyes open and will try to explore further whenever there is some new development,” inspectorgeneral of police, Ujjain range, Pawan Jain, said.
Interestingly, no one has ever dared to ask what made the government stop investigations into the murder case. In fact, the officers who decided to touch the file were not spared, an officer in Dewas said. Recently, the CBI has included the name of Joshi in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case. Nine people died in the terror attack in Hyderabad.
Nobody in the state is really interested in explaining why it has failed to piece together the terror jigsaw, despite several key characters hailing from it. And when a team comprising the NIA ( National Investigation Agency), CBI, and Maharashtra and Rajasthan ATS officials crept into Madhya Pradesh in connection with the 2007 blasts, the state was a mute spectator. The message was clear: Madhya Pradesh would have nothing to do with the ongoing investigations.
In October 2008, the Maharashtra Police entered the state and detained four youths — Shyam Sahu ( of Tukoganj, Indore), Dilip Nahar and Shivnarayan Singh ( of Bangli Chowk, Indore) and Dharmendra Bairagi ( of Dewas) — in connection with the Malegaon and Modasa blasts.
The action followed the arrest of Pragya Singh Thakur, who is originally from Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh and is incarcerated as an accused in the Malegaon blast case. The daughter of an ayurvedic doctor, Thakur holds a masters degree. She became an activist of the Durga Vahini ( VHP’s women’s wing) and was a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad ( ABVP) from 1993- 2002. Thakur came into the limelight following her alleged involvement in the murder of Joshi.
Then there was the case of alleged chief strategist Sameer Kulkarni, a former member of the ABVP who got affiliated to another Hindutva organisation called Abhinav Bharat. He, too, was arrested by the Maharashtra ATS from Bhopal in October 2008. The same force detained Lt Col Srikant Prasad Purohit, who was serving at the Army Education Corps Training College and Centre in Pachmarhi — a hill station in Madhya Pradesh — in October 2008.
Two other conspirators who are natives of Madhya Pradesh are Shamlal Sahu and Ramji Kalsangra.
Kalsangra, believed to be the brain behind the September 29 Malegaon blast, is absconding.
Almost two years later, when fresh arrests took place in the state, its government kept mum again. This time, the Rajasthan ATS nabbed Chandra Shekhar Leve, a resident of Shajapur district, in April this year. He belongs to a landlord family of the district.
Leve, an active RSS member for years, has been involved with several other Hindutva groups as well.
A month after this incident, the Rajasthan ATS reached Mhow district and arrested Lokesh Sharma, who runs an engineering unit in the Pithampur industrial area of Dhar district. Now, with the name of Leve and Sharma figuring prominently in the chargesheet in the 2007 Ajmer blast case, the Madhya Pradesh government seems to be tongue- tied yet again.
“ I have read about the news in today’s newspaper. I’m not in Madhya Pradesh, so I won’t be able to comment on how we are going to act,” state home minister Uma Shankar Gupta said. “ I’ll go through all the details upon coming back and will then decide the future course of action,” he added.
Mail Today
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Gehlot could do a Togadia to RSS leader & have him arrested
By Sudhanshu Mishra in Jaipur
WILL Ashok Gehlot do a Praveen Togadia to Indresh Kumar? The Rajasthan chief minister is understood to have given the state ATS a free hand to take the probe into the 2007 Ajmer Dargah blast case to its logical conclusion. At the same time, he seems to be weighing the political option of arresting RSS leader Kumar in the immediate future.
Sources said that with investigating agencies confident of digging up more dirt on Kumar, the probability of his being arrested was high. It was also felt that since such an action would put the Sangh Parivar on the defensive, it would minimise the possibility of any serious political fallout. Sources close to chief minister Gehlot said that on the basis of the probe findings, he could score political brownie points by nabbing Kumar.
But the political fallout of such a move would also depend on the role that BJP national general secretary Vasundhara Raje decides to play in the matter. Reacting to the chargesheet, Raje called it a political conspiracy to implicate Kumar.
“This is an attempt to defame a person who had tried to play the role of a bridge in bringing together the practitioners of various religions through the Rashtravadi Muslim Manch ( of which Kumar is a leader),” she said.
Gehlot, for his part, said the RSS should accept that its leaders were involved in terrorist activities. “ The state ATS has acted impartially and the truth will come out through the judiciary,” he added.
Observers are wondering whether Gehlot would show the same political will and alacrity that he had displayed as the chief minister in April 2003 when VHP leader Togadia was arrested and sent to jail for making an inflammatory speech at a trident initiation ceremony in Ajmer.
Gehlot had banned the type of tridents the VHP was distributing.
Togadia failed to get bail from the judicial magistrate as he was booked under section 121- A of the IPC ( waging war against the state or attempting antinational activities) as well as under the Arms Act. He was granted bail by the sessions court only after a week, that too after he furnished two securities and a personal bond.
After the Ajmer episode, Togadia lost his “ charm” with the Sangh Parivar activists of the state and could never regain his previous “ stature”, thanks to the strong stand taken by Gehlot. Significantly, one factor that ensured that the BJP workers were not carried away by Togadia’s arrest and law and order remained almost normal in the state, was the role played by the late party veteran, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
Though Shekhawat had become the Vice- President of the country later, his dislike for the outspoken VHP leader was an open secret.
Source: Mail Today
URL: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamWarOnTerror_1.aspx?ArticleID=3580
1:01 AM
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