Hindu fanatics had carried out 2006 Malegaon blast

NEW DELHI: Now, it is official that 2006 Malegaon blast that killed 37 people and injured over 100 was, perhaps, not perpetrated by Muslim fundamentalists but Hindu fanatics. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday officially declared the Samjhauta Express blast accused Rajender Chaudhary as an accused in the 2006 Malegaon blast case. An NIA special court on Friday issued production remand for Chaudhary alias Samunder in connection with the case. He will be produced in the court on January 3, when NIA will likely be granted his custody for interrogation and investigation in connection with the terror act. Maharashtra ATS had arrested and charge sheeted nine Muslim men — several of them associated with SIMI — accusing them of perpetrating the attack with in their bid to incite communal riots to overthrow the Indian state. NIA investigations have, however, indicated that the blast was engineered by Hindu fanatics led by Swami Aseemanand and former RSS Pracharak Sunil Joshi. The agency arrested Chaudhary in the second week of December in connection with the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast. However, during interrogation Chaudhary is believed to have spilled the beans on the 2006 Malegaon blast as well. Sources say, he has revealed that he along with Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange plotted, surveyed sites and executed the blast to avenge attack on Hindu temples by Islamic terrorists. On September 8, 2006, powerful multiple blasts near Hamidia mosque in Bada Kabaristan area in Malegaon after Shab-e-Barat prayers killed 37 people and injured over 100. In December, 2006, Maharashtra ATS charge sheeted nine Muslim men in the case. However, a public outcry led the state government to transfer the case to the CBI that toed the ATS line in its first supplementary charge sheet to the case. A new perspective to the case emerged in November, 2010, when CBI arrested Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Aseemanand from an ashram in Haridwar. Aseemanand revealed during interrogation that it was his group that was behind several blasts including Samjhauta, Ajmer Dargah, Mecca Masjid (Hyderabad) and Malegaon (in 2006 and 2008). Following this, the government transferred the 2006 Malegaon case from the CBI to the NIA. Source: TOI