8.1.11

Swami Aseemanand spills the beans


Swami Aseemanand, the hardline Hindutva swami, has confessed to his involvement in the terror attack on Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid, while confirming that bomb attacks on the mosques in Malegaon (both in 2006 and 2008) as well as the Samjhauta Express were carried out by Hindu radicals and he knew about it. Jailed RSS leader has confessed that he and several Sangh activists among others had a direct role in Malegaon, Samjhauta Express, Ajmer and Mecca blasts, security agencies claimed on Friday. Aseemanand aka Jatin Chatterjee, born Naba Kumar Sarkar, has linked Hindutva radicals also to the bomb explosion in a minority-dominated locality in Gujarat’s Modasa town. Further, he said RSS leader Indresh Kumar was part of the plan that was hatched to avenge bomb attacks on Hindu temples, but said that militant Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath provided no help to one of the accused in these cases of saffron terror. Indresh, Aseemanand claimed, helped enlist leading members of the saffron terror plot, including Sunil Joshi and Ramchandra Kalsangra, aka Ramji. He also discouraged Aseemanand from taking to violence himself. In a statement recorded before a magistrate under Section 164 CrPC which is admissible in a court of law, the swami also identified the group of Hindutva radicals who allegedly attacked mosques and the train carrying Pakistani citizens as part of the ‘Bomb-for-Bomb’ plan to avenge jihadi terror strikes. Before making his confession, Aseemanand reportedly told the magistrate that he knew he could be sentenced with death penalty but he wanted to make the confession. He decided to make a clean breast of his involvement in terror plots because of a Muslim boy who was arrested, wrongly it now transpires, for the Mecca Masjid blast. Kaleem’s plight motivated Aseemanand to think of “atonement” so that the innocent man doesn’t suffer. The confession reveals that the network behind saffron terror was far stronger and motivated, and its reach wider than suspected so far.
Malegaon blast- 8 Sept 2006
Samjhauta Express blast- 18 Feb 2007
Mecca Masjid blast- May 18 2007
Ajmer blast-Oct 11 2007

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