How Thakur went from a student leader to ‘sadhvi’ to blast accused

As the high court grants bail to 2008 Malegaon blast accused, HT traces her journey from MP to Malegaon

team of Maharashtra’s anti-terrorism squad swooped down on a housing society at Puna Kumbharia village in Gujarat’s Surat district on October 10, 2008, to arrest an ochre-robed, self-proclaimed ‘sadhvi’: Pragya Singh Thakur.

She looked like the new version of Sadhvi Ritambhara or that of Uma Bharti in the 1990s. While other controversial sadhvis or women ascetics were accused of arousing religious passions through their speeches, Pragya was arrested for a violent crime: a bomb blast in Maharashtra’s Malegaon town on September 29, 2008, that killed six people and injured 101 others.

She was arrested because the LML Freedom motorcycle used in the blast was registered in her name. The Bombay high court granted Pragya bail on Tuesday, saying it had found “no prima facie evidence against” her.

Her father, an Ayurveda practitioner named Chandrapal Singh Thakur, has denied she had any role in the blast and said she had sold the bike to a person called Mahesh in 2004. The motorcycle, however, was still registered in her name at the regional transport office in Surat when the blast took place.

Pragya’s arrest shocked her friends in Madhya Pradesh where she attended college. She is the third of five children and joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in the early 1990s.

Subsequently, Pragya moved to MP as her father was transferred from Jalaun district in Uttar Pradesh to Lahar in Bhind in the 1970s as an agriculture department employee. Her father again shifted to Surat around 2000 when Pragya was setting out on a post-graduation in history.

Pragya stayed back in Madhya Pradesh and charted her own course. It was a time when her family got proposals for her marriage. A young Indian Police Service officer contacted her father but Pragya, who was still in college, refused marriage because she wanted to pursue a career in student politics.

She rose to the post of the state organising secretary of ABVP in 1996 and lived in Ujjain for a year before quitting the organisation in 1997. She then tried to run an NGO in Bhind in 1998 but it was not successful.

Pragya was associated with many obscure and loose-knit organisations such as Vande Mataram Jan Kalyan Samiti and Rashtrawadi Sena.

In 2005, she led a religious procession called ‘Chunari Yatra’ in Dewas, and stayed in Jabalpur for a while.

Pragya also owns some land in Jabalpur where it is believed she planned to build an ashram.pragya announced she had become a sadhvi in 2007 at the Allahabad Kumbh and was ordained by the popular seer Swami Avadheshanand Giri, the head of the powerful Juna Akhada.she assumed a new name: Sadhvi Poornachetananand Giri.

BLOW TO PUROHIT

The court, however, minced no words in rejecting Purohit’s arguments. It said that it could not accept his contention that he had no role in the blast and attending the meetings only to gather military intelligence.

The bench refused to consider the findings of the ministry of defence and the court of inquiry, which Purohit claimed supported his contentions.

It said that at this stage, it could only rely upon the case diaries and the charge sheets.