The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday filed a charge sheet against four people for allegedly plotting the 2006 Malegaon blasts but omitted names of accused Pragya Singh Thakur, former Lt Col Srikant Purohit and Aseemanand alias Jatin Chatterjee.
Pragya and Purohit were arrested in 2008 after Aseemanand, a member of right-wing Abhinav Bharat, who was taken into custody for carrying out the Samjhauta train blast, in his confessional statement said that Malegaon blasts were carried out by Hindu outfits.
The NIA’s move on Wednesday left both the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which were carrying out parallel probes into the blasts, embarrassed.
The NIA, in its voluminous charge sheet, alleged that the four accused — Ramchandra Kalsangra alias Ramji (absconding), Dhan Singh, Manohar Singh and Rajendra Choudhary (in custody) — were the key people who had carried out the 2006 blasts in Malegaon that left 337 people dead.
The charge sheet, filed before the Special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime (Act) Court, has charged the accused with murder and other sections of Indian Penal Code and the Explosives Act.
The NIA prosecutor told the court that further investigations were needed against members of right-wing terror outfits — Lokesh Sharma, Sandeep Dange and Ashwani Chauhan alias Amit Halka (absconding) — as the agency suspects that they played a pivotal role in carrying out blasts in 2006 and 2008 in the dusty power-loom town of Malegaon, around 300 km from Mumbai.
The charge sheet added that the agency has announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh to anybody who provides information on the 41-year-old Kalsangra.
The NIA believes that Kalsangra planted explosives on cycles just outside the mosque and cemetery on September 8, 2006.
The breakthrough in the 2006 and 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts case came when Abhinav Bharat member Chatterjee confessed before the magistrate about the Malegaon blasts being carried out by a Hindu-supremacist outfit.
Chatterjee also stated that one RSS worker Sunil Joshi along with some others were responsible for the blasts.
By then, the Maharashtra ATS had already arrested nine Muslim youths in the case.
All the nine came out of the jail, after spending nearly five years, when the prosecution quietly refrained from opposing their bail plea.