Entire case is based on falsehood: Lt Col Purohit
Lt Col Purohit in Malegaon blast case claims the narrative was fabricated, witnesses tortured, and evidence planted by ATS.
MUMBAI: In his statement to the court, Lt Col Prasad Purohit, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon Bomb blast case, claimed that the entire case was based on falsehood and the narrative was fabricated and concocted.
The case is related to the incident that occurred around 9:30pm on September 29, 2008, when a bomb kept on a motorcycle exploded near Hamidia Masjid in Malegaon, a communally sensitive textile town in the Nasik district of North Maharashtra. Six persons were killed and 101 injured in the blast that was probed initially by the Maharashtra Police’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and then, taken over by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2011.
It was alleged that Purohit was a member of Abhinav Bharat, a trust formed to promote Hindu values but allegedly acted as a front to carry out attacks against Muslims, and that he collected funds to buy arms and explosives for the trust and organised meetings where the Malegaon attack was planned.
“Purohit was also accused of floating an organisation by the name of Abhinav Bharat in the year 2007 with the intention to propagate a separate Hindu Rashtra with their own constitution with the intent to threaten the unity, integrity and security of India,” said the NIA’s chargesheet in the Malegaon case.
However, in his statement to the court under section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code, Purohit claimed that several witnesses were tortured, threatened, and detained, at times at gunpoint to extract prefabricated statements as required by the ATS and/or other political masters. He further expressed shame stating that ATS not only compromised national security but also had permanently harmed the reputation of the Indian Army.
He further asserted that on 29 October 2008, he was taken to an isolated bungalow in Khandala, where late Hemant Karkare, the then ATS Chief, Param Bir Singh, the then joint commissioner of ATS and at least six ATS constables attacked him and tied him to a chair upon his refusal to divulge the details of his intelligence network owing to the basic ethos of intelligence.
In his statements, Purohit recalled that he was treated worse than an animal or a prisoner of war of an enemy country till November 3, 2008, with continued insistence from Singh, Karkare, and Col Shrivastav that he owned up to the Malegaon bomb blast and should further name the senior right-wing leader of RSS and VHP, Yogi Adityanath, then Member of Parliament from Uttar Pradesh.
Purohit further alleged that ATS leaked fake information to media channels that broadcasted the agency’s success at cracking the case and naming him, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and others as the accused, when he was not even officially arrested.
He called the entire narrative drafted, fabricated, manufactured with the planting of evidence and a “classic example of situated investigation” where the ATS built the story of claimed investigation around the individuals whom they always wanted to arrest probably as directed by political masters, building a case around the targeted individuals who were now the accused.