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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: May 16, 2016, 08:30 AM IST
The investigation into Malegaon terror blasts of 2006 and 2008 has been twisted and tortuous right from the beginning. A closure came for the Muslim suspects in the 2006 case, who had been arrested under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), tortured, let off on bail until the special court finally discharged them last month after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) told the MCOCA court two years ago that there was no evidence to link the accused to the blasts. Now, the NIA finds that the evidence against Pragya Thakur, one of the accused in the 2008 blast case is weak, and therefore drops charges. As to the other main accused, Prasad Shrikant Purohit, he is now being charged under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) rather than the stringent MCOCA.
The trouble with the NIA stance begins when it blames Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) led by Hemant Karkare, who was killed in the November 26 Mumbai attack, for creating false evidence against Purohit by placing RDX in his home. That is a puzzling discovery, to say the least. Apart from being an unseemly inter-agency battle, it has serious implications as well. The NIA is obliged to prove as to who did this mischief in the ATS. It is a known fact that it is a general practice among the police that they foist not only false charges, but also false evidence. The NIA by making this charge against the ATS has unwittingly opened a can of worms.
Purohit however still faces cases under UAPA, and it is to be presumed that the military officer had some role to play in the September, 2008 Malegaon blasts remains. Now that the Muslim suspects who were accused for the 2006 blast case have been discharged, and charges have been dropped against many of the alleged suspects in the 2008 blast case, it becomes imperative that the NIA find the real culprits in the two blasts, which occurred two years apart.
The Malegaon blast investigation also got caught in the political polemic. When Thakur, Purohit and others were arrested, a section of people who believed that innocent Muslims were being constantly hauled up for terror acts that they had not committed, turned around and said, “Look, there are Hindu/saffron terrorists as well, and the police have been targeting only the Muslims.” It was a faulty argument in many ways, but it took the debate away from the real issue of who the real culprits in the Malegaon blasts are. Initially, the BJP and its ideological affiliates were on the back foot, and they, especially the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), distanced themselves from Thakur, Purohit et al, and they claimed that terrorism is unacceptable from wherever it emanates. The man who stuck his neck out was the BJP patriarch, L K Advani, who expressed concern over Thakur and her custodial torture. It is indeed the case that he had not objected to torture of a prisoner in any other instance.
When the Muslims who were accused in the 2006 case were discharged, it was seen as an instance of the vindication of their innocence. It is now being strongly felt that the NIA dropping charges against Thakur et al is a partisan move, and that it is an attempt to save right-wing Hindu elements engaged in terror activities because the BJP-led NDA is in power. It is quite possible that Thakur and others are innocent and that they have been falsely implicated. What is quite apparent in the investigation into the 2006 and 2008 Malegaon blast cases is that there is a serious malfunction in the investigation into terror acts.
