Year later, ATS says fresh leads in Malegaon probe

Mumbai : On September 29 last year, Shagufta Farheen, 10, had told her mother that she wanted to be a “big person” when she grew up, writing “high” in her English notebook to reflect her “ooncha” ambitions. But that was not to be. The same day, Shagufta and five others were killed in a blast at Bhiku Chowk.

A year later, 11 have been arrested in the case; a chargesheet has been filed against, among others, a sadhvi — Pragyasingh Thakur — and an Army officer — Lt Col Prasad Purohit; and the probe, which has spanned five states, has involved an alleged conspiracy by right wing Hindu extremists and RDX whose source is yet to be tracked.

Meanwhile, Farheen’s mother, Farida, is still waiting for the promised compensation from the state government and Samajwadi Party leader Abu Azmi, who had both announced a cash relief of Rs 1 lakh each. Her plight echoes that of the families of the other victims.

“Farheen wanted to become a doctor. She was learning English to get admission in an English medium school and take us out of this neighbourhood,” said Farida.

In Mumbai, Additional DGP (ATS) K P Raghuvanshi is convinced that the probe “in many ways is significant for our times as it finally confirmed that ATS does not go behind any religion. It tried to connect the crime to the criminals, who, in this case, happened to be people with extremist right views.”

The three men who allegedly planted the bomb— Ramji alias Ramchandra Kalsangra, Sandeep Dange and Pravin Mutalik—are yet to be nabbed. Quashing reports which allege that Ramji is dead, Raghuvanshi said: “Our teams are out. Ramji is alive. We have enough new leads which confirm that he is alive. We will have them soon.”

But the ATS is yet to connect many dots, the most important one being who sourced the RDX and how. Meanwhile, the paperwork that the ATS needed to give the Army is also done. “They had asked us for the required details for the court martial of serving officer Lt Col Prasad Purohit. We have given all the details without compromising on the investigation,” he said.

On the status of the case, Raghuvanshi said he could not talk about it as it is “sub-judice”, but added that the probe and exchange of information with other states is still going on. At the time of the arrest, ATS had requests from investigators from Gujarat, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and even the CBI to question the accused.

Even as the state terrorism squad has taken a “slight hit” on the MCOCA charges front, the case is still strong, claimed Raghuvanshi. “One must not forget that the higher courts have brought a stay on the matter. The point is that we have been given permission to still proceed with the probe using all the provisions of MCOCA. So we will still have the authority to take the confession of the accused, according to the provisions of MCOCA when we nab the three bomb planters,” he said.

In July this year, Special Judge Y D Shinde dropped the MCOCA charges against the accused on a technical point of laxity shown by the prosecution in obtaining cognizance against one of the prime accused, Rakesh Dhawade, a Pune-based arms collector, who was also booked for two blasts inside mosques in Parbhani and Jalna in 2003 and 2004 respectively. The ATS claimed that Dhawade had provided arms training to suspects involved in those two explosions and his role was uncovered during the Malegaon blast investigations.

The chargesheets were filed against Dhawade on November 13 and November 15 last year. On the basis of these two chargesheets, the ATS had booked all the accused under MCOCA on November 20. However, defence lawyer Shrikant Shivde successfully argued that the police had filed the chargesheet in a haphazard manner just to book the accused under MCOCA.

On January 20 this year, a 4,528-page chargesheet was filed against the accused.

Soon after the MCOCA charge was dropped by the court, the state moved the Bombay High Court and got a stay on the case. “The case is pending before the HC and we have challenged the Special Court’s order. We have argued that the Special Court judge assumed the power of the High Court under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code and challenged the premise under which the court had rejected the bail application of accused. The high court will pass an order on October 6 on whether or not the case should be transferred to the Nashik court,” said special public prosecutor Rohini Salian.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/year-later-ats-says-fresh-leads-in-malegaon-probe/522705/