Purohit got RDX in J-K,IED assembled in Nashik

LT col Prasad Purohit,the Army officer accused in the Malegaon bomb blast case,allegedly procured RDX while he was posted in Jammu and Kashmir...

LT col Prasad Purohit,the Army officer accused in the Malegaon bomb blast case,allegedly procured RDX while he was posted in Jammu and Kashmir and had stored it in a cupboard in his Pune home before it was used to make the crude bomb that killed six persons on September 29,the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) said on Tuesday,as it named him as the main conspirator in the case.

The disclosure was made by the ATS in the chargesheet in the case,which was filed in a Special MCOCA court,along with a revelation that some of the accused had also allegedly travelled to Nepal and met Maoist rebels there,although acting ATS chief K P Raghuvanshi said there was no link between the two groups. He also said investigators had leads about the movements of one of the three men still wanted in the case Ramji Kalsangra,Sameer Dange and Praveen Mutalik but could not share more details as it could hurt the probe.

The improvised explosive device,the chargesheet said,was assembled in the Nashik house of Sudhakar Chaturvedi,the Hindu monk arrested from Uttar Pradesh. The ATS found a detonator,gunny bag,cotton swabs with traces of RDX,Ammonium Nitrate and Nitrite radicals which matched the explosives used at Malegaon,it added in the chargesheet which ran into more than 4,000 pages.

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According to the chargesheet,the 11 people in custody and the three fugitives entered into a criminal conspiracy,between January 2008 and October 23,2008,with the common object and with intention to strike terror in the minds of people by exploding a bomb in Malegaon and to overawe the Government. The chargesheet contains statements of 452 witnesses and mentions that 224 explosive substances were seized.

The members of the organised crime syndicate got a serving officer of the Army,Purohit,float an organisation called Abhinav Bharat in 2007 to propagate a separate Hindu Rashtra with its own constitution and aims and objectives. The group met in Faridabad,Kolkata,Bhopal,Indore,Nashik,collected fire arms,explosives and other articles,required for assembling bombs and aided and abetted each other by advocating,inciting and knowingly facilitating the commission of terrorist act,it said.

The seized laptop computer of Dwivedi,the chargesheet claims,contains audio and video recordings of the conspiracy meetings.

Raghuvanshi said two of the 11 in custody Dwivedi and Rakesh Dhavde had confessed and their statements had been recorded under MCOCA,which makes it admissible in court during the trial. They raised a total of Rs 21 lakhs for Abhinav Bharat. In fact,Purohit has also been found to procure arms licences illegally for some people, Raghuvanshi alleged.

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While Judge Y D Shinde allowed the ATS to file the chargesheet,he said he would take cognisance of it on Wednesday only after passing an order on the validity of the application of MCOCA on the accused. Defence counsels appearing for two of the accused,said the application of MCOCA on their clients was incorrect.