Practically demolishing the earlier UPA government’s `Saffron terror’ accusation against RSS and BJP, a prosecution witness in the infamous Malegaon blast case turned hostile in the Special NIA Court in Mumbai, yesterday.
He alleged that he was harassed to give a statement to the Maharashtra Ant-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was headed by the then Additional Commissioner of Police Param Bir Singh. He is now under suspension in criminal cases.
He stated in the court that the ATS tortured him forcing to say the names of four RSS leaders and present Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Prior to this, at least 13 witnesses have turned hostile and denied the claims they previously made in front of the probe agencies.
RSS leader Indresh Kumar reacting to this development, has demanded an apology from former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. He accused that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) conspired against ‘saffron’ to link it with terrorism.
“Congress-led UPA (during 2008 Malegaon blast) conspired against ‘bhagwa‘ (saffron)…linked it with terrorism. They attempted to misuse (probe) agency officers to arrest people so as to defame religious leaders, but failed miserably,” he added.
He also slammed the other political parties and their leaders, “who are now sitting in Opposition”, saying they had also committed “a big sin and a crime” as they stood by the Congress and its coalition government’s “dirty politics and conspiracy to falsely implicate the BJP and the RSS leaders” in the so-called saffron terror cases.
On September 29, 2008, six people were killed and over 100 others were injured after a bomb strapped on a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon, Maharashtra.
While the court framed charges against the accused in October 2018, the delay in the trial has been attributed to the novel coronavirus situation and the retirement of previous judge VS Padalkar. So far, only 140 of the 400 prosecution witnesses have been examined.The terror charges against Lt. Col. Purohit, Pragya Thakur, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahikar, Ramesh Upadhyay, Sudhakar Dwivedi and Sudhakar Chaturvedi entail Sections 16 (committing the terrorist act) and 18 (conspiring to commit terrorist act) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
They have also been charged under Sections 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 153 (a) (promoting enmity between two religious groups) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant provisions of the Explosive Substances Act.
