Three months before India elects its new national government, terrorism charges have come back to haunt Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), a Hindutva organization and parent body of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition party in the country.
Aseemanand, an accused in blasts that rocked various parts of India between September 2006 and September 2008 — including the terror attack on Samjhauta Express, a twice-weekly train which connects New Delhi to Lahore, in February 2007 which claimed over 70 lives — has allegedly claimed in an interview to a news magazine that RSS head Mohan Bhagwat and Indresh Kumar, a member of RSS’ seven-member National Executive, had sanctioned the blasts in the train, Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid (May 2007) and Ajmer shrine (October 2007).
The magazine Caravan, which follows narrative style, quotes Aseemanand, a former RSS official, saying that the RSS Chief and Kumar heard his plans to ‘bomb several Muslim targets around India’ and declared, “It is very important that it be done. But you should not link it to the Sangh.”
The RSS has rubbished the allegation and questioned the veracity of the interview. RSS spokesman Ram Madhav wondered how a person who has been incarcerated for over four years could be interviewed.
The BJP has blamed Congress’ “dirty trick department” for the charge. Aseemanand’s lawyer J. S. Rana has also denied that his client ever gave an interview to the magazine.
But Caravan stands by the interview and has since released the audiotapes and transcripts of around nine-and-a-half-hour-long conversation that was conducted four times over two years. Aseemanand faces charges of murder and sedition and is imprisoned in a jail in Ambala, a city in northern India.
Aseemanand, 63, has allegedly told the magazine that he told the RSS leaders about his bombing plans in a meeting in Gujarat State in July 2005.
Aseemanand is learned to have said that Sunil Joshi, a RSS worker and also an accused of the blasts who was mysteriously killed in December 2007, was present during his meeting with the RSS duo.
Opposition leaders — Ramvilas Paswan, Sitaram Yechuri, Mayawati etc — have demanded a fresh probe into the allegations.
RSS ‘behind bombing of Muslim targets’
RSS ‘behind bombing of Muslim targets’
