Malegaon blast case (Part 4): “Indresh Kumar was involved in the blasts” Purohit revealed in a letter written to Indian army
In the fourth part of our series on Malegaon blasts case Nirendra Nagar describes why Lt Col Purohit blamed Indresh Kumar and Sadhvi Pragya Thakur for the blasts.
After being arrested for his involvement in the Malegaon blasts, Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit has been saying that he was acting as an army spy. He mentioned that he had informed three army personnels about ‘those who were involved’ in the Malegaon blasts. Let us find out today who Lt Col Purohit spoke to about this matter and when.
Lt Col Purohit mentioned two points in his defence. First, that he had informed Col Vinay Panchpore and Major Praveen Khanzode over the phone on October 13/14, 2008, about ‘those people who are involved in such activities.’ Col Panchpore was the commanding officer of the Southern Command’s liaison unit, and Praveen Khanzode was an intelligence officer in the same Deolali unit. Additionally, he referenced a letter he wrote to Intelligence Officer Major Bhagirath Dey on October 15, 2008.
Let’s find out what Lt. Col Purohit told Col Panchpore and Maj Praveen Khanzode. There is no recording of this call, so we can draw conclusions based on what Col Panchpore told the Army’s Court of Inquiry (COI).
Panchpore told COI in his statement, ‘Two calls were made on October 14, 2008, after the Malegaon blasts, and Purohit mentioned that Sadhvi Pragya was involved. I asked him to call the Deolali unit.’
In the letter written by Purohit to Maj Bhagirath Dey, he claimed that Pragya was also involved in this matter. Besides this, he provided information about the activities of Hindu extremists in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. In his letter, Purohit also mentioned RSS leader Indresh Kumar and explained how he had established a significant influence over current and former ABVP workers and how he operated in Madhya Pradesh through his two aides. Purohit also referred to the Gujarat blast that occurred in July and stated that Indresh Kumar was behind it as well.
He wrote, ‘The blasts in Gujarat and Malegaon occurred on the same day and the same technique was used in both. I have learned that Indresh Kumar of RSS is behind this, who is knowingly or unknowingly playing into the hands of ISI.’
About Pragya, Purohit wrote that ‘there is a woman operating in your field named Pragya Singh, who is originally from Morena or Bhind. She travels between Indore, Jabalpur, and Gujarat. The vehicle used in the Malegaon blast was made from a combination of three different vehicles, one of which was a Bajaj Freedom, and it is registered under the name of the aforementioned woman. Before his death, the Pracharak (Sunil) Joshi was using this vehicle, and it was registered in Surat.’
Two conclusions can be drawn from Purohit’s call made to Panchpore and the letter written to Bhagirath Dey. One, that he was indeed an army spy and was providing information to the army about them. The second, he was doing this to save their own skin.
No information was given before the explosions
Let’s examine both the possibilities. If Purohit was indeed working as a spy, since when he had been doing so and whether he provided any information to his seniors regarding Pragya, Indresh Kumar, or any other Hindu nationalist leader before these explosions?
The answer to that is – NO. No document has been submitted by either Purohit or any other person in the courts or the army’s COI that proves that Purohit had provided to the army any information about Pragya or any other Hindu nationalist leader or activist ‘before the explosion’. The NIA also spoke to senior army officials, and they too stated that it was not in their knowledge that Purohit was in any way engaged in gathering secret information by infiltrating Hindu nationalist organisations.
Thus it seems more likely that when Purohit came to know that the identity of the owner of the bike used in the Malegaon blast, I.e. Pragya, was about to be uncovered and that the police were questioning Pragya, potentially leading her to reveal his name, he called Col Panchpore and Major Khanjode to prepare a defence for himself. After that, he also wrote a letter to Major Bhagirath Dey and mentioned Pragya’s involvement to manufacture a document in his favour. Note that the blast occurred on September 29, and the calls and letters that Purohit presents in his defence were made/sent after a gap of 15 days.
As a matter of fact, the ATS had already found out who the owner of the bike was within a week of the blast and had contacted Pragya. On October 8, there was a conversation between Pragya and Ramji Kalasangre in which Pragya mentioned that the police would take her away the next day. It is quite possible that Pragya or someone else informed Purohit about this, and then Purohit, in a bid to protect himself made calls and sent a letter to his fellow army officers naming Pragya in the blasts.
No action on the Purohit’s letter
A question also arises that when Purohit informed Panchpore and Bhagirath Dey that Pragya and Indresh Kumar were involved in this explosion, what did they do? Wasn’t it their duty to inform the ATS about this? But they did nothing.
Col Srivastava had asked Major Dey the same question after Purohit had told him about the letter. He asked, ‘What did you with that letter?” he replied, “I kept it.’’
Should it be inferred that he did not find the information provided in that letter to be ‘credible’?
Bhagirath has said something similar in his statement given to the COI, that there wasn’t any specific information in this letter. He stated, ‘Between July 14, 2008 and October 4, 2008, I was undergoing a Special Chinese Refresher Course at the Army Educational Corps Training College in Pachmarhi. It was during this time that I met Lt Col Purohit.
‘In the second week of October 2008, Lt Col Purohit called me. He had some information that he said he could not disclose over the phone. On October 15, 2008, I sent a Havaldar to Lt Col Purohit who brought a letter. The letter contained some vague information about an RSS leader Indresh Kumar and a woman Pragya Singh.’
What this means is that the information Purohit provided to Panchpore and Bhagirath Dey was so vague that the officials did not take note of it at all. Did Purohit only have this much information about these leaders, especially since he had been meeting these Hindutva leaders and activists, including Swami Aseemanand, since 2006? Why did he not mention the members of the organization named ‘Abhinav Bharat’ in whose meetings he had participated, where they were planning not only to carry out blasts in Muslim areas but also to assassinate RSS Chief Bhagwat and Indresh Kumar? What had Purohit been doing for the past two years?
( We will learn more about this in the next part.)
(THE WRITER IS EX EDITOR, NAVBHARAT TIMES WEBSITE)
