Blast conspiracy hatched in UP

It all started on last year’s Republic Day at Faridkot. Lt Colonel Prasad Purohit took charge for providing explosives and Sudhakar Chaturvedi agreed to make available two men for planting and triggering a blast, reports Kanchan Chaudhari.

It all started on last year’s Republic Day at Faridkot. On that day in a meeting at the Uttar Pradesh town, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit took charge for providing explosives and Sudhakar Chaturvedi agreed to make available two men for planting and triggering a blast.

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However, the Faridkot meeting had not decided the target. It took them two and a half months more to finalise the target spot.

On April 11, in a meeting in Bhopal, where retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Sameer Kulkarni, Dayanand Pandey, Purohit and Chaturvedi were present, Muslim-dominated Malegaon was finalised as the target. The accused, according to the chargesheet filed by the ATS, decided to trigger a blast in the powerloom town.

In July last year, Sadhvi introduced two of her confidantes — Ramchandra Kalasangra and Sandip Dange — to Chaturvedi and asked him to direct Purohit to provide them the required explosive.

Rakesh Dhawade, reportedly a trained expert in assembling explosive devises, visited Panchmarhi in Madhya Pradesh last July and allegedly trained wanted accused Pravin Mutalik and others in exploding bombs.

Pravin Mutalik, who stayed at Chaturvedi’s residence at Deolali, used to ride a golden coloured LML Freedom motorcycle that was the sadhvi’s. The bike was used by Dange, Mutalik and Ramji to plant the IED, which exploded on September 29 last year in Malegaon.