In the 2008 Malegaon blasts, only the names of Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt. Col Prasad Srikant Purohit usually come up, but in this case that was investigated first by ATS and then by NIA, several other individuals are also facing trials.
In this final part, we will learn about the entire conspiracy and the roles of those involved. There has been a slight difference in the investigation conclusions of ATS and NIA, and hence, out of the 14 people initially charged by ATS, only 7 are currently on trial. Two individuals are absconding, which is why they are not facing trial. All the remaining accused have been declared not guilty.
By Nirendra Nagar
The initial 14 accused
The Maharashtra ATS filed a charge sheet on September 29, 2008, in connection with the Malegaon blast case, which included the names of 11 arrested and 3 absconding accused.
Names of arrested accused
1. Pragya Singh Chandrapal Singh Thakur, Occupation – None
2. Shiv Narayan Kalasangra, Occupation – Electrician and LIC agent
3. Shyam Sahu, Occupation – Mobile shop and property dealer
4. Ramesh Upadhyay, Occupation – Job
5. Sameer Kulkarni alias Chanakya Sameer, Occupation – Full-time worker of Abhinav Bharat in Bhopal
6. Ajay alias Raja Rahirkar, Occupation – Business and Treasurer of Abhinav Bharat Trust
7. Rakesh Dhawde, Occupation – Study of ancient weapons.
8. Jagdish Mhatre, work – Property dealer
9. Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Occupation – Job in the army working as Lt Colonel.
10. Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi aka Dayanand Pandey aka Swami Amritanand Devteerth, Occupation – none
11. Sudhakar Omkarnath Chaturvedi aka Chanakya Sudhakar, Occupation – Full-time worker of Abhinav Bharat in Nashik
Names of absconding accused
1. Ramji alias Ramchandra Kalsangra, Occupation – Zero
2. Sandeep Dange, Occupation – Zero
3. Praveen Mutalik, Occupation – Zero
Roles of Pragya and Purohit
Let’s go in detail and find out what they are accused of. The main allegation is that these 14 men conspired with each-other between January 2008 and October 23, 2008 to carry out blasts in Muslim areas, collecting weapons, explosives and other materials required for the blast, and executed the plan in the form of the Malegaon blast.
- According to the ATS charge sheet, the first meeting was held on 25/26 January 2008 in Faridabad in which Prasad Purohit, Ramesh Upadhyay, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sameer Kulkarni and Sudhakar Chaturvedi were present. In this meeting, it was planned that a bomb blast should be carried out somewhere in the country, for which the responsibility of collecting explosives would be borne by Purohit and Chaturvedi would do the job of mobilising men.
- The next meeting was held on 11/12 April 2008 in Bhopal in which Pragya Singh Thakur was also present in addition to the 5 people who attended the January meeting. In this meeting, it was decided that to seek revenge from the Muslims, a blast should be carried out at a place in Malegaon where they have a dense population. Purohit took the responsibility of collecting the explosives while Pragya took the responsibility of mobilising the man.
- Two months later, on or around June 11, in a meeting at the Circuit House in Indore, Pragya Singh Thakur introduced Ramchandra (Ramji) Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange (both absconding) to Sudhakar Dwivedi and said that both of them were her confidants. In the first week of July, Pragya asked Sudhakar Dwivedi to talk to Purohit about providing explosives to Ramji Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange in Pune.
- The next meeting was held at Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain on August 3, in which Purohit was tasked with providing RDX to Ramji Kalsangre and Sandeep Dange in Pune.
- After this meeting, the names of three more individuals got associated with this plan. They are Ajay Rahirkar, Rakesh Dhawde, and Praveen Mutalik.
▪ Ajay Rahirkar was a businessman and also the treasurer of Abhinav Bharat. He played a significant role in the financial transactions related to this scheme.
▪ Rakesh Dhawde was an expert in weapons and ammunition. Dhawde had also set up an institute in the name of studying ancient weapons, although he had previously been accused of training the accused in making explosives in the bombings that occurred a few years ago.
▪ Praveen Mutalik was absconding at the time the charge sheet was filed, and all that was known about him was that along with some other people, he had received training from Rakesh Dhawde in making explosives in Pachmarhi. Besides this, he had also been living in the house in Pune where the bomb was made since September 22, 2008. Another person was living in that house, who owned the golden-colored motorcycle used to plant the bomb in Malegaon. We also know that the motorcycle was registered in the name of Pragya Singh Thakur (Read part 1 for details).
Now was the role of Lt. Col. Purohit in all this? According to the charge sheet Lt. Col Purohit, along with some others, formed an organization named ‘Abhinav Bharat’ in 2007, with the aim of establishing a Hindu nation in India, which would have its own separate constitution. Members of this organization held meetings in several places including Faridabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Indore, Nashik etc. Additionally, Purohit raised a fund of ₹ 25 lakh for the organization and supplied RDX that was used in the blast, which was assembled at Purohit’s house with the help of Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Ramsingh Kalsangra.
This charge sheet was filed on January 20, 2009. ATS Chief Hemant Karkare had already become a victim of the Mumbai terrorist attacks by then. Subsequently, a supplementary charge sheet was filed on April 21, 2011. However, before the case could progress, it was handed over to NIA.
After NIA took over the investigation
In 2011, when the Indian government realised that the attacks in various parts of the country were linked to each-other, it handed over the cases of Malegaon 1 (September 2006), Samjhauta blast (February 2007), Mecca Masjid blast (May 2007), Ajmer Dargah blast (October 2007), Malegaon 2 (September 2008), and Modasa blast (September 2008) to NIA. NIA took over the Malegaon case along with the other cases under the order number 1-11034/18/2011-IS-IV dated 01/04/2011 from the Government of India.
Modasa investigation closed
On the day of the bombing in Malegaon, another bomb exploded in Modasa, Gujarat. In Modasa, the bomb was planted in a two-wheeler, resulting in one person’s death. The modus operandi of the blasts in Malegaon and Modasa was similar – same day, same time, same method. However, while the Mumbai ATS traced the owner of the motorcycle used in the blast based on its chassis number, the Gujarat police neither traced the owner of that two-wheeler nor advanced the investigation. (It’s worth noting that Narendra Modi’s government was in power then). The local police there shrugged off any responsibility, claiming they had no evidence. In such a situation, there was hope that the NIA would be inspired by the investigation conducted by Mumbai ATS to uncover the people behind the Modasa blasts. But in 2015, it stated that the investigation was closed because the Sabar Kantha district police took too long and all evidence had been destroyed.
How removal of MCOCA helped accused
Meanwhile, several accused filed petitions in higher courts challenging the MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) imposed on them, which led to delays in further investigation of the case.
It is important to note that MCOCA is applied to those who have been running a crime syndicate for the last ten years, and all members of the gang must have been involved in the incidents that occurred during that period. The defence argued that the incidents from Parbhani and Jalna, which were linked to impose MCOCA on the accused, occurred in 2003 and 2004, and by then ‘Abhinav Bharat’ had not yet been formed. Therefore, Purohit and Pragya cannot be classified as members of any crime syndicate.
In April 2015, Supreme Court agreed with the defence arguments, declaring that no case can be filed against Purohit and Pragya under MCOCA. The withdrawal of MCOCA against these accused meant that all testimonies and confessions made under MCOCA were rendered ineffective, leading the accused and witnesses to backtrack on their statements one after another. Despite all this, based on phone calls and video and audio recordings present on laptops, the NIA filed a supplementary charge sheet in May 2016, seeking permission to further investigate against the ten accused, while deciding not to proceed against Pragya Singh Thakur, Shivnarayan Kalsangra, Shyam Sahu, Praveen Mutalik, Lokesh Sharma, and Dhan Singh Chaudhary due to the lack of sufficient evidence.
One petition after another
Even after this, it took more than two years for charges to be framed against Purohit and others. Lt. Col Purohit was dragging the judicial process under a calculated strategy so that witnesses and evidences would disappear. Initially, the accused repeatedly filed petitions for bail, and when Pragya and Purohit received bail from High Court and Supreme Court in 2017, Purohit challenged the charges against him. Another year passed in all this. Ultimately, on October 30, 2018, NIA court framed charges against Purohit, Pragya, and five others under the UAPA. It is noteworthy that although NIA had decided to leave out Pragya from its investigation due to lack of evidence against her, the NIA court found her culpable and ordered prosecution against her as well. Two other accused, Rakesh Dhawde and Jagdish Mhatre, were acquitted of the remaining charges and were only ordered to be tried under the Arms Act.
The people against whom charges have been framed are – Lt. Col Prasad Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya Singh, Major (Retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sameer Kulkarni. They have been charged under Section 16 (committing terrorist acts) and Section 18 (conspiring to commit terrorist acts) of UAPA. In addition, they are also facing cases under IPC Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (conspiracy to commit murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt), and 153-A (promoting enmity between different religious groups). If found guilty under these sections, they may face life imprisonment or the death penalty.
Judge Vinod Padalkar, while reading the charges against the accused, said, ‘These seven accused and two absconding accused conspired together to spread terror and communal discord between January and October 2008, during which an RDX bomb was placed on a motorcycle in Malegaon, resulting in the death of 6 people and injuring 101 others.’ According to the court, ‘the accused met to plan terrorist actions and arranged explosives to execute this conspiracy.’ The court charged Ramji Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange with fitting the bomb on the motorcycle. Both of them have been absconding since the blast. We read in the first part of this series about one of them, Ramji Kalsangra, asking Pragya why the vehicle wasn’t placed in a crowded area and why so few people died.
The hearing of the case is over and a judgement is expected on 8th May 2025. We do not know what the decision will be.
In the past seven episodes, we have learned that the involvement of the accused in Malegaon blast is clearly evident from the post-blast telephonic conversations between them, as well as the video and audio recordings of the meetings of Abhinav Bharat. However, after the change of power at the center in 2014, NIA tried to weaken and slow down the investigations, which makes it less likely that the justice will be served.
NIA officials tried to dilute the case
The change in the behaviour of NIA was also mentioned by its government lawyer Rohini Salian. Rohini Salian stated in an interview with NDTV which was published in ‘The Wire’ that NIA changed people and hid evidence from the court to weaken the case. She mentioned that based on the clues gathered from the ATS investigation in 2008, she had prepared a substantial 4000-page charge sheet, but when NIA filed its charge sheet in 2016, none of that material was presented in court.
According to Rohini, ‘Initially, the situation was not that bad. When NIA took over the investigation in 2011, there were some capable and dedicated officers who wanted to prepare a strong case against the accused. But gradually, people who wanted to weaken the case started to infiltrate the team. And when I was told in June 2014 to drop this case, those capable officers were also dismissed. Some were sent back to their parent cadre, while others were sidelined.’ Rohini mentioned that between 2011 and 2014, three senior officers from NIA investigated the case, but they were prevented from filing a supplementary charge sheet based on their investigation and before they could do so they were removed from the case.
Rohini Salian exposed these efforts back in 2015 when she stated in an interview given to the Indian Express that NIA’s Superintendent of Police Suhas Warke had urged her to go easy on accused in the Malegaon case. Following Rohini’s revelation, Warke was removed from NIA, but after some time, he joined ATS and is currently handling the same case on behalf of ATS. According to Rohini, ‘This is how efforts are being made to strike at the very foundation of the case.’ The intentions of NIA are further evident as they have not taken action against the two absconding accused, even though they were under the protection of a BJP minister in Madhya Pradesh until last year.
We had high hopes from NIA court judge Vinod Padalkar because he rejected the clean chit given to Pragya in NIA’s supplementary charge sheet in 2016. But he is no more hearing the case. We have a new judge A. K. Shetty is to deliver his judgement.
But it doesn’t matter who is the presiding judge when the prosecutor itself doesn’t present the witnesses or allows them to turn hostile and fails to put the evidence on record. In the Samjhauta case, Special judge Ravindra Reddy while acquitting all accused including Aseemanand, underlined it very clearly that NIA did not present crucial evidence related to the Samjhauta case before the court.
Therefore, despite having a plethora of evidence against all the accused, we should be ready for a verdict that acquits all the accused in the Malegaon case as happened the cases of Samjhauta and Mecca Masjid.
This eight-part series concludes today. You can tap/click on this link to read the previous parts of this series.
By Nirendra Nagar
(The author has been editor to Nav Bharat Times website)
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