Malegaon Blast and Verdict: A Copy Book Conspiracy from Beginning to End
Uday Narkar
THOSE who are committed to believe in, and steadfastly practice India’s constitutional morality, are certainly ‘dismayed and disappointed’ over the Special NIA Court’s verdict acquitting all seven charge-sheeted in 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case. The verdict is symptomatic of the way criminal justice system is manipulated to serve the cause of the so-called Hindu rashtra. The latter’s sinister shadows appear to darken the horizons of the future of democracy, secularism and rule of law in the country.
A case of anti-national conspiracy was made to look like a vengeful case against ‘highly respected’, god-fearing individuals for whom certain human lives are at their mercy. A contorted logic of the RSS ideology turned reality topsy turvy and hoped to make Indians stand on their heads and contemplate the world around. That the final outcome of this court trial is a product of the well-planned execution of the ecosystem created by the RSS is beyond doubt to those whose heads are in the right place.
This high profile case ended in acquittal of the seven accused led by Pragya Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving Indian Army officer.
The Trial Court hit the nail right on the head when it observed in its judgement that this was a ‘heinous crime’ and rued that it had ‘gone unpunished.’ Punishing those responsible would have been a slap on the face of those equating terrorism with Islam. All the accused are professed Hindus and take pride in the violent legacy of political Hindutva, as was evident from eulogies showered on Nathuram Godse by the chief architect of this dastardly terrorist act. The court was not fooled, to the chagrin of RSS ideologues, that this crime was just an illusion and the court starkly noted that the bomb blast was an ‘undisputable’ fact. It also pointed out, however, that the court of law ‘is not supposed to proceed’ in the absence of hard evidence. And it is here that the cookie of investigation crumbled.
PAIN AND AGONY OF A RECOLLECTION
September 29, 2008 will permanently remain a scar etched in the memory of the 130 families and the entire citizenry of Malegaon whose 35 members died a horrid death and 95 who remain maimed for the rest of their life. It was the month of Ramadan and the atmosphere in the town wore a festive mood when at 9.35 pm a blast ripped apart a large joyful neighbourhood. At its centre was an LML freedom motorcycle with a fake number plate. The Maharashtra government instituted an Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) headed by a respected senior police officer, Shri Hemant karkare, who was later martyred in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. The ATS, while minutely investigating the crime at Malegaon, found a circle which was suspected to be behind the incident. The ATS arrested Pragya Thakur, Prasad Purohit, Ramesh Upadhyay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi and one Sudhakar Chaturvedi. They were charge-sheeted under various articles of IPC including UAPA.
The ATS landed upon a deeply hatched conspiracy. There was a history behind various incidents of terrorist nature not only in Maharashtra but all over the country involving various Hindutva militancy modules. Before the Malegaon blast, Hindutva extremists were apprehended in several acts of terror at Jalna (2004), Malegaon itself in which initially many Muslims were wrongfully put under arrest for ten long years and later acquitted, Ajmer Dargah, Samjhauta Express and Mecca Masjid, all in 2007. In the 2006 Malegaon blast in which 37 persons were killed, an Islamist group was accused of that ghastly crime, but later the ATS found that a ‘Hindutva’ militant group was suspected to be behind it.
In its thorough investigation, the ATS collected evidence of meetings held under the leadership of Pragya Thakur in which the Malegaon terror attack was planned. It recorded several witness accounts. It may be recollected that Aseemanand, connected to RSS, had confessed to these terror attacks. The ATS found the two persons, Ramji Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange, who had actually carried out the placing of the motorcycle laden with explosives at the fateful spot. Since the deeper conspiracy looked quite widespread across the country, the state government handed over the investigation into the hands of the NIA in 2011.
The entire complexion of the investigation changed after the Modi government came to power at the centre in 2014. The Special Public Prosecutor, Rohini Salian went on record alleging that some higher ups in the NIA had pressured her to “go soft” on the accused and she resigned in 2016. And the needle of suspicion began pointing towards the role of the NIA in the further investigation in the case. The Maharashtra Act of MCOCA was dropped at the behest of the NIA from the proceedings of the Trial Court and evidence recorded under it was held as infructuous and inadmissible in the further hearing. A score of witnesses suddenly turned hostile and retracted the statements they had given earlier. It is openly alleged that about 35 files of witness statements are missing from the investigating agency’s records and were never brought before the court. The court observed in its verdict that it had noticed ‘significant failures’ in the investigation and arguing of the case before the court. It was mentioned in an editorial in The Hindu on January 1, 2018 that NIA argued in the court in favour of Abhinav Bharat, earlier implicated in this case, saying that it was ‘not involved’ in this conspiracy.
Some of the observations by the Trial Court beg sharp questions. One is emboldened to submit that the observation that Pragya Thakur may not have been involved because she could not have owned the said motorcycle since she had ‘renounced the material world’. Her becoming an MP as a BJP candidate may be termed as a supremely spiritual attainment by this logic!
The editorial in The Hindu of January 1, 2018 itself, had observed the suspected derailment of constitutionally mandated values of justice and equal treatment to every citizen of the country, and whether the trial would be ‘fair’.
The fairness of the NIA is put to test when one looks at the political harvesting of this verdict. Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, who had with great alacrity announced that the government would appeal in the SC against the Mumbai train blast case verdict, refrained from saying the same in Malegaon case verdict. Nothing else can be expected of the police under Fadnavis, who also holds the home portfolio, with its track record especially under the BJP rule – all the accused in the mob lynching case of IT engineer Mohsin Shaikh at Pune being freed on account of lack of ‘credibile and convincing’ evidence, the murderers of Dr Narendra Dabholkar going scot-free as the efficient police fail to find a tiny revolver, the murder weapon and the actual murderers of the Communist veteran Govind Pansare still ‘absconding’ like those two in the Malegaon case, even after a decade. The Bhima Koregaon 16 are still either languishing in prison or attending the unending trial or in the state of graceful blessedness in their afterlife like Stan Swamy.
In short, it’s BJP style politics, stupid.
