Gauri Lankesh murder probe finds Malegaon blasts accused, linked to Sadhvi Pragya, held bomb-making camps  

Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her house in Bangalore, on September 5, 2017.

New Delhi: The documents of investigation in the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, submitted by the special investigation team to a Bengaluru court, revealed that the four wanted members of Hindutva outfit Abhinav Bharat, also wanted for blasts in the Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Dargah and Malegaon between 2006 and 2008, trained several suspects linked to the fringe Hindutva group Sanatan Sanstha in making bombs at secret training camps across the country between 2011-2016, an Indian Express report said.

Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, the Bharatiya Janata Party Lok Sabha candidate from Bhopal constituency, is also an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case along with 13 others, including two missing Abhinav Bharat members – Ramji Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange – who have been declared “proclaimed offenders.”

According to the information revealed, three men linked to Sanatan Sanstha and arrested in the Lankesh murder case along with four witnesses, who attended the training camps, described the presence of a “Babaji” and four “gurujis” at the camps where training was given in making bombs.

Information provided by the SIT also revealed that police believes that Suresh Nair, an Abhinav Bharat member accused in the 2007 Ajmer dargah blast case, was “Babaji” in the training camps and was arrested by the Gujarat ATS in Bharuch in November 2018. When Nair was shown portraits of the other trainers at camps, he identified them as Dange, Kalsangara and Amit Hakla alias Ashwini Chauhan.

Nair’s arrest also revealed the three other bomb experts at Sanstha-linked camps, namely Dange, Kalsangara and Ashwini Chauhan — all “proclaimed offenders” in the Samjhauta Express case and four other blast cases.

Dange, a former RSS worker – who is considered a bomb expert – and has an Interpol red corner notice against him along with Kalsangara carry a Rs 10 lakh reward each while Hakla carries a Rs 5 lakh reward.

The SIT also found that 19 training camps were organized by the Sanatan Sanstha-linked group in the usage of firearms, improvised explosive devices across India between 2011 and 2017. In those camps, five IED experts attended five of the camps in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka as “guest trainers”.

According to the case documents the camps provided training to dozens of people recruited by a covert unit of the Sanatan Sanstha linked to the murders of the rationalist Dabholkar, leftist thinker Govind Pansare, Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh.

Journalist and rights activist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her Rajajeshwari Nagar house in Bangalore, on September 5, 2017.

Related