TERROR IN THE HINDU FOLD
In Nalasopara, within the Mumbai metropolitan region, Vaibhav Raut was a known quantity. Or at least his neighbours thought they knew him—a gau rakshak who conducted illegal raids on butcher shops and assaulted people he accused of smuggling beef. Even the police knew him, sometimes ordering him to stay away from the area during Bakri Eid celebrations. What his neighbours may not have suspected, though, is that Raut fancied himself an amateur bomb-maker. Or so allege the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which arrested Raut, Sudhanwa Gondhalekar and Sharad Kalaskar from Nalasopara on August 11, having found several pistols, crude bombs, and associated paraphernalia, including instructions on how to make bombs.
Raut, in whose house the weapons were found, was a member of the little-known Hindu Govansh Raksha Samiti. Gondhalekar was a member of another Hindu organisation. But the men were more closely linked through the extremist group Sanatan Sanstha and its satellite, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS).
On January 13, 2011, the CongressNCP state government had asked the UPA government at the Centre to ban the Sanatan Sanstha. But the home ministry had turned down the proposal saying there was no evidence against the group. The present BJP-Shiv Sena government revived the proposal to ban the organisation and sent it to the Centre on November 13, 2015, with new cases against them.
While the Sanatan Sanstha was quick to distance itself from Raut, the HJS backed him, claiming that the ATS was in the habit of harassing Hindu activists, of conjuring up terror plots where none exist. “Let them prove it in court,” the HJS challenged in its statement, pointing out that the likes
of Sadhvi Pragya and Colonel Prasad Purohit spent years in prison over the 2008 Malegaon blasts before they were released on bail with little evidence of their guilt produced in the court.
Operating on the edge of what is still described as the Hindutva fringe, Raut and his self-appointed vigilantes, about 100 in number, led what they called ‘raids’ on slaughterhouses even before the state government’s ban on beef came into effect in 2015. His associates maintain he was not the sort of man who could make bombs. “He didn’t even use abusive language,” says one, “he was passionate about the sanatan dharma, how can we believe that he was assembling bombs in his spare time?”
Gondhalekar was a subscriber of Sanatan Prabhat, the fortnightly magazine of the Sanatan Sanstha. He is a father of two, and known to be an introvert. He ran a computer animation business in Pune, and is suspected to have had the technical knowledge to make bombs. Gondhalekar is also suspected by the police of having links to the Shiv Pratishthan Hindustan run by Sambhaji Bhide, who was named as a suspected instigator of caste violence in Koregaon-Bhima in January this year.
Kalaskar is not very educated. He is said to have visited his parents at regular intervals and given them Rs 10,000-15,000. His family claims that they are unaware of his sources of income.
Sanjeev Punalekar, the lawyer representing all the three suspects, says his clients have been “falsely implicated because they oppose cow slaughter ”. Devotion to cows is frequently cited as a reason why these men cannot have been in possession of a substantial cache of guns, bombs and equipment. Even in Nalasapora, despite Raut’s longstanding Hindutva activism, many in his community insist that the arrests are part of a conspiracy by the ATS.
No motive has been suggested yet for the hoarding of weapons, no sense of the targets, though some ATS officers have, anonymously, mentioned suspicion that the pistols might reveal links with the murders of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and Communist leader Govind Pansare in 2013 and 2015, respectively. The arrests have prompted the Congress and NCP to yet again demand a ban on the Sanatan Sanstha. Will the BJP/ NDA at the Centre agree?
The arrests have prompted the NCP and Congress to once again demand a ban on the Sanatan Sanstha