Mecca Masjid blast: NIA court acquits Aseemanand, 4 others
HYDERABAD: A special court in Hyderabad on Monday acquitted for lack of evidence five men, including former members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), who were accused of being involved in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast that claimed the lives of nine people.
Indicted by India’s federal counter-terror bureau National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2013, the men were accused of having plotted the attack as part of a Hindu extremist conspiracy, an allegation that immediately pitted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against the then ruling Congress government.
Among them was Swami Aseemanand, who has been named in several other cases with a similar motive.
The 2007 attack took place during Friday prayers in the mosque adjacent to the historic Charminar in Hyderabad on May 18, killing nine people and leaving 58 injured.
Five others were killed in police firing in the violence that followed immediately after the blast.
In addition to Aseemanand, the men acquitted are: RSS pracharak from Rajasthan Devendra Gupta, property dealercum-rss activist from Madhya Pradesh Lokesh Sharma, Gujarat’s Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar and a farmer from Madhya Pradesh, Rajender Chowdary.
NEWDELHI: He was once described by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) mouthpiece ‘Organiser’ as the ‘hero of Dangs’, the tribal belt of Gujarat where Nabh Kumar Sarkar, better known as Swami Aseemanand, was once a key coordinator of Rss-affiliated Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram.
Aseemanand was born on November 19, 1951 in Kamaarpukar village of Bengal’s Hooghly district. A post-graduate in science, he began working with the Ashram in 1977 first in Bengal before he moved to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In 1997, he settled in the Dangs to work among tribals.
But by 2010, Aseemanand had become the target of a manhunt launched by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for his alleged involvement in the Mecca Masjid blast.
Investigators then believed that Aseemanand disappeared after investigations began, only to be arrested a few months later.
“An input came that he was allegedly hiding in a village near Haridwar under a false name of Swami Omkaranand and that he managed to procure false identity papers,” an a CBI official who was has been involved in investigations involving Aseemanand, explaining how the agency tracked him down.
The official asked not to be named since he was not authorised to speak on the matter.
After his arrest, Aseemanand made confessions before a magistrate in Delhi under Section 164 of Criminal Procedure Code (CRPC), laying out a purported conspiracy by Hindu extremists.
CBI, and eventually the National Investigation Agency (NIA), relied upon this testimony of his which was admissible as evidence unlike a statement given before a police officer. A chargesheet was filed against him in three cases – the attack on Samjhauta Express (February, 2007), the blast at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad (May, 2007) and the explosion at Dargah Ajmer Sharif (October, 2007).
Aseemanand’s lawyers were quick to file applications in all cases retracting his statement, alleging that confession was forced.
“Besides, there was no corroboration of the alleged statement given by him,” said JP Sharma, his lawyer.