In a crucial breakthrough, an accused in the Ajmer Sharif blast case has confessed before a magistrate to being part of the right-wing terror group that planted two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the dargah.
Out of the two IEDs left in the Dargah, one exploded killing three people on October 11, 2007.
“Bhavesh Patel, who was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Delhi last month, gave a confessional statement before a magistrate in Jaipur under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code which makes it admissible as evidence in the court, unlike a statement made before a police officer,” said a source.
Bhavesh was also accused of throwing pipe bombs on a mosque in Bharuch, his native city in Gujarat, on the next day of the Godhra train fire of February 27, 2002.
According to sources, Bhavesh has said in his statement that some seven or eight days before the Ajmer Sharif blast, Suresh Bhai (Suresh Nair, an absconding accused in the Ajmer Sharif case) invited him for a visit to Ajmer. Once he accepted the invitation, Bhavesh was asked to reach Godhra. On October 10, he reached Godhra and met Suresh Nair who had come with Mukesh Vasani and Harshad alias Raj (already arrested in the Ajmer Shairf case) and three more persons. The group reached Ajmer the next day at around 11am. The group went to the Dargah in the evening and planted two IEDs there.
{{/usCountry}}According to sources, Bhavesh has said in his statement that some seven or eight days before the Ajmer Sharif blast, Suresh Bhai (Suresh Nair, an absconding accused in the Ajmer Sharif case) invited him for a visit to Ajmer. Once he accepted the invitation, Bhavesh was asked to reach Godhra. On October 10, he reached Godhra and met Suresh Nair who had come with Mukesh Vasani and Harshad alias Raj (already arrested in the Ajmer Shairf case) and three more persons. The group reached Ajmer the next day at around 11am. The group went to the Dargah in the evening and planted two IEDs there.
{{/usCountry}}Bhavesh also revealed that he didn’t know the real purpose of visit. It was only after they sat in the bus to return to Ahmedabad, that Suresh Nair told him that they had gone to the Dargah to plant bombs.
Nair told him that the plan was hatched by Manoj Bhai (an alias used by Sunil Joshi, a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak and the leader of the group), who was killed by his own men almost two months after the Dargah blast on December 29, 2007.