Pradnya Singh Thakur alias Sadhvi Purnachetanand Giri has played as much a role in the Malegaon blast as army officer Lieutenant Colonel Srikant, according to the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS).
The September 29 blast in Maharashtra’s powerloom town, 280 km north of Mumbai, claimed
six lives.
Even as Defence Minister AK Antony on Friday voiced his concern over the involvement of an army officer in the blast, PTI reported that a colonel posted in Deolali, near Nashik, and a Major may face interrogation in connection with the blast.
The police are now treating both the sadhvi and Purohit as key conspirators. While Purohit allegedly facilitated finance and explosives for the blast, the sadhvi is now believed to be the person who travelled across India to identify potential cadre.
The police believe she was in constant touch with cadres from the Hindu fundamentalist outfit Abhinav Bharat, who constructed and planted the bomb. “Pragya’s interrogation has revealed that she was closely associated with Abhinav Bharat,” the ATS has said in the November 3 remand application, a copy of which is with HT. “It was ascertained during interrogation that she had met absconding accused Ramji Kalsangra (the man who allegedly planted the bomb) in Ujjain on October 8 and discussed the Malegaon blasts.”
Apart from being present at the meeting at Nashik’s Bhonsala Military School on September 16 along with Purohit, “the firebrand sadhvi also met the army officer on October 5 in Ujjain and discussed the blast,” said a police official.
Her speech impressed retired army major Ramesh Upadhyaya, prompting him to join Abhinav Bharat, said sources. The organisation, founded by nationalist Veer Savarkar in 1904 and dissolved in 1952, was revived in 2006 by Savarkar’s brother’s daughter-in-law Himani Savarkar. The remand application names Upadhyaya as the working president of the body and another arrested accused, Sameer Kulkarni, as its Madhya Pradesh state president.
Like Purohit, Kulkarni too has links with Jammu and Kashmir. Earlier this year, he is said to have travelled to the state from where investigators believe the RDX for the blast could have been procured.