Muslim India headlines
  1. Hope to get justice now: Pathribal victim’s son
  2. 'Murder': SC cites AFSPA, lets Army choose what kind of trial
  3. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: THE MAN WHO KNEW THE FUTURE
  4. Face covering prohibited in Manglore College
  5. Mosque demolished in Rajasthan, Waqf Board blames Imam
  6. Indian Muslims Still Paying the Price of Partition
  7. ‘Centre ignoring Muslim freedom fighters’ : JUHind
  8. Hyderabad: Hindu Vahine activists triggered riots, Four arrested
  9. Syed Ghulam Akber Engineer is no more
  10. Fact finding Report on Communal Violence in Hyderabad
More Muslim India headlines
World headlines
  1. Iran, big powers agree to keep talking
  2. West to target Iran's nuclear fuel work
  3. Developing Economies Ready to Check Bluff of Developed World
  4. Iran cuts oil to Greek firms over payment problems: Report
  5. US bents: No Iran oil-import sanctions for Japan, 10 EU nations
  6. Israel attack killed over two dozen civilians in Gaza
  7. Netanyahu Says U.S. and Israeli ‘Clocks’ Differ on Iran’s Threat
  8. Obama warns Israel against ‘Loose Talk of War on Iran"
  9. Lady Tonge resigns Lib Dem party whip over Israel remarks
  10. India Asserts Against US Israel Effort to Name Iran in Delhi Terror Attack
More World headlines
Nation headlines
  1. 'Cops fanning Islamophobia'
  2. Fissures within NDA over presidential candidates
  3. Sachar, Mishra, Harsh Mander, yet the Silent Budget of 2012 ...... and our inaction
  4. Seeking legal opinion to free blast accused: UP CM
  5. Saffron extremists hurl meat on temple to trigger riots, four on run, one arrested
  6. Kashmir report rules out ‘simple return to pre-1953 situation'
  7. CCS may be briefed on Kashmir interlocutors report on Thursday
  8. Narendra Modi tops negative votes in global poll
  9. FRANKLY SPEAKING : Arms lobby planted the story
  10. SC spreads its media gaze from court to crime to contempt
More Nation headlines
you are here: Home /
 

Samjhuta Express blast case breakthrough, Sangh Activist in NIA net

By News Desk
Updated Tuesday, 14 February 2012 18:02:01 - IST (UTC +5:30)

New Delhi: National Investigation Agency (NIA) today produced a right wing activist Kamal Chauhan before the special NIA court in NOIDA and took him on transit remand for his interrogation in Samjhuta Express bomb blast case. The accused was arrested by NIA from Indore on Saturday and flown to Delhi on Sunday. The blast had left nearly 70 dead and 100 injured — most of them Pakistanis in Feb 2007. The accused, who is a long time RSS worker, accepted his guilt before the press on Tuesday. BJP is perturbed over the development.
According to the NIA, Chauhan, a resident of Moorkheda village near Indore, is alleged to be one of the conspirators in the case. He is suspected to be one of the persons who planted the briefcases loaded with explosives on February 18, 2007.
“We will question him regarding his association with Sunil Joshi,” said a top NIA official. Joshi, an RSS District Paracharak had allegedly procured the two suitcases used in the twin blast from a shop in Indore.
During its investigations and especially after the arrest of Swami Aseemanand, the NIA found that the blast was the handiwork of saffron terror outfits and not of SIMI or any Pakistan based terror organisatins as was accused by IB and the than Union Home Minister Shivaraj Patil. According NIA investigations the other key suspects were Sandeep Dange, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Ashok alias Ashwini Chauhan. Trio are still on the run on whom the NIA has announced rewards ranging from Rs 2 to 10 lakhs. Sunil Joshi has been killed and it is suspected that some right wing activists are the culprits.
Interestingly Chauhan’s name did not figure among those declared proclaimed offenders by the NIA.
Officials said that his custodial interrogation will provide vital leads, particularly about the three missing accused persons and the sources of explosives.
The arrest comes as a major achievement for the NIA. The case had been put on the back-burner as there had been no significant movement. None of the accused could be arrested, and the NIA suffered a setback after Assemanand retracted his statements.
Kamal Chauhan, believed to be a close aide of Ramji Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange, key accused in the case, was arrested after he was asked to appear before the NIA headquarters in New Delhi following summons served at his home in Madhya Pradesh, official sources said.
The NIA had already charged Swami Aseemanand, Sadhvi Pragya, Sunil Joshi (who has since died), Sandeep Dange, Lokesh Sharma and Ramchandra Kalasangra alias Ramji for the blast in the Samjhauta Express, which operates between Delhi and Lahor, on February 2007.
The Hindu reports, citing sources, that Chauhan has for long been a RSS activist.
The NIA claims the blast was masterminded by Swami Aseemanand, a former RSS activist, who was arrested in November 2010, confessed in court to having carried out other bombings, including of Muslim places of worship as ‘bomb for bomb’ reprisal for acts of terrorism by Muslim groups.
Although he subsequently retracted his confession as having been secured under duress, he was indicted in June 2011.
Details of the conspiracy behind the Samjhauta blast were revealed in a confession by Naba Kumar Sarkar, a Hindutva leader from Gujarat. In December 2010, he had confessed to a magistrate that he was present at a meeting in June 2006 at which the ‘reprisal’ terror attacks had been plotted.
NIA sources claim that Hindutva leaders had resorted to vigilante acts of terror because the political leadership was shy of responding with “an eye for an eye” tactics against terrorism by Muslim groups, as was exemplified during the 2002 riots in Gujarat. At that time, following the terror attack on a train at Godhra station, targeting kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya, Gujarat witnessed pogroms against Muslims.
To this day, the Narendra Modi administration faces charges that it either abetted in the riots , or did not intervene decisively to stop them.
The Samjhauta Express bombing also thrust into the foreground the charges of ‘saffron terror’, levelled by Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh and P Chidambaram, against satellite Hindutva groups that share a political philosophy with the BJP.

Tags: News Desk Samjhauta Express Blast, RSS, NIA, Panchkula, Indore, Aseemanand, Pragya Thakur

  • 'Cops fanning Islamophobia'

    MUMBAI: The last time Muslims and Dalits created a joint political platform in Maharashtra was in the 1980s. Led by former smuggler and don Haji Mastan, the Dalit Muslim Suraksha Mahasangh (DMSM)...

    2012-05-07 17:11:22 |
    0 comments
  • RDX not used in 13/7 blasts, but found in...

    MUMBAI: Chemical analysis of a powder-like substance collected from a Byculla apartment where two suspected Pakistani 13/7 bombers stayed has proved that it is the deadly explosive RDX. The...

    2012-05-03 17:34:23 |
    0 comments
  • Hope to get justice now: Pathribal victim’s son

    Srinagar : For Abdul Rashid Khan, it has been a long wait for justice. Twelve years after his father Juma Khan was allegedly picked from his house, killed in a fake encounter and dubbed a foreign...

    2012-05-03 17:30:23 |
    0 comments
  • 'Murder': SC cites AFSPA, lets Army choose what...

    New Delhi : The Supreme Court gave the Army full “discretion” to choose between a court martial and a criminal trial for seven officers accused of killing five persons in an encounter in...

    2012-05-03 17:27:07 |
    0 comments
  • Syed Ghulam Akber Engineer is no more

    New Delhi. Syed Ghulam Akber, member Markazi Majlis-e-Shoora (Central Advisory Council) and former Secretary Jamaat-e-Islami Hind breathed his last at Care Hospital in Hyderabad at about 1 p.m....

    2012-04-30 20:38:08 |
    0 comments
  • Fact finding Report on Communal Violence in...

    Government responsible for Communal Violence in Hyderabad city RSS outfits Communalizing the situation and polarizing population by developing Communal Sentiments. Introduce and pass Communal...

    2012-04-25 11:01:25 |
    0 comments
  • Samjhauta Terror Attack: bombs Assebled in...

    New Delhi : An accused in the 2007 Samjhauta blasts, Lokesh Sharma, has reportedly revealed that all the bombs used in Hindu terror cases were assembled and stored at a rented accommodation in...

    2012-03-12 15:13:04 |
    0 comments
  • Kamal Chauhan and Aseemanand do not know each...

    Panchkula: Kamal Chauhan and Swami Aseemanand, arrested for Samjhauta Express terror attack claim that they do not know each other. This shows perfection of Sanghs terror module that a on foot worker...

    2012-02-25 20:42:56 |
    0 comments
  • SC questions Modi Govt for appointing encounters...

    New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday questioned and rejected the Gujarat government's unilateral decision to appoint a new chairperson of the committee to monitor investigations into 22 police...

    2012-02-25 20:25:45 |
    0 comments
  • Chauhan came under NIA scanner a yr ago

    New Delhi: Alleged Samjhauta Express bomber Kamal Chauhan first came under the National Investigation Agency (NIA) scanner almost a year back when the agency started looking for people who used to be...

    2012-02-23 21:37:48 |
    0 comments
  • Defeat Pernicious Hindutva Terror Designs

    YET another link to the terror web cast by the RSS and its affiliates has been established with the arrest of one Kamal Chauhan by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for his alleged involvement...

    2012-02-21 16:47:22 |
    0 comments
  • New witness: Months before Samjhauta, saw...

    New Delhi: An RSS sympathiser in Jharkhand has told investigators that months before the February 2007 terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express, he had seen detonators similar to the ones used in...

    2012-02-21 13:48:09 |
    0 comments
  • ‘4 men planted 4 bombs on Samjhauta’

    Startling revelations by Kamal Chouhan, an RSS activist, are helping investigators understand how the Samjhauta Express bombs were brought to the capital, who all took it to the railway station and...

    2012-02-18 10:55:28 |
    0 comments
  • Digvijay hits at RSS on involvement in terror acts

    Lucknow: A day after a an ardent RSS worker confessed to have planted a bomb in Samhjauta Express, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Wednesday sought a “close vigil” on the...

    2012-02-15 17:07:22 |
    0 comments
  • Samjhauta bomber’s confession puts BJP, RSS on...

    New Delhi: The confession of a RSS activist, Kamal Chauhan, before the media that he had planted bombs on Samjhauta Express in 2007 had put the BJP on back foot who is fighting a war to arrest its...

    2012-02-15 12:39:32 |
    0 comments
  • It was a terror attack: PC

    New Delhi: More than 24 hours after the car blast outside the Israel embassy in New Delhi which injured four people, investigators have said that it was a sophisticated attack carried out by a...

    2012-02-15 13:00:43 |
    0 comments
  • RSS man Kamal confessed Planting the Bombs in...

    PANCHKULA/NEW DELHI: Kamal Chauhan, a well doctrine RSS worker arrested by the NIA, had confessed that he planted bombs on board Samjhauta Express in 2007. Kamal Chauhan, who was arrested from Indore...

    2012-02-14 20:41:56 |
    0 comments
  • Iran condemns Zionists' claim on Georgia, India...

    TEHRAN (ISNA)-Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast condemned Zionist regime's claim on Iran's involvement in attacks against the regime's embassies in India and Georgia. He said the...

    2012-02-14 19:15:02 |
    0 comments
  • Samjhuta Express blast case breakthrough, Sangh...

    New Delhi: National Investigation Agency (NIA) today produced a right wing activist Kamal Chauhan before the special NIA court in NOIDA and took him on transit remand for his interrogation in...

    2012-02-14 18:50:01 |
    0 comments
  • Branded Terrorist, he lost 14 years in Jails

    NEW DELHI: As 18-year-old Mohammad Amir Khan walked to see a hakeem in Bahadurgarh on the night of February 20, 1998, his biggest worry was the kidney stones he had developed. Little did the teenager...

    2012-02-11 13:25:06 |
    0 comments