The names of two absconding males, who had been accused within the 2006 and 2008 Malegaon blasts circumstances, additionally surfaced through the Karnataka Police’s investigation into the homicide of 55-year-old journalist Gauri Lankesh exterior her house in Bengaluru in September 2017.
Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange, who’re additionally wished within the 2007 Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blast case, and the 2007 Ajmer Sharif blast case, had been suspected to be among the many 4 males who skilled a few of the 17 males, arrested within the Gauri Lankesh case, at secret camps the place coaching was supplied to recruits to make bombs.
Kalsangara and Dange, who’re linked to the right-wing outfit Abhinav Bharat, are additionally amongst seven males linked to a number of terrorism circumstances within the nation between 2006 and 2009 who’ve disappeared within the final 15 years.
The others are Ramesh alias Amit alias Ashok alias Ashwini Chauhan who can be linked to Abhinav Bharat and wished within the 2006 Malegaon blasts and the 2007 Samjhauta Categorical blasts circumstances; Jay Prakash alias Anna, Praveen Limkar, Sarang Akolkar, and Rudra Patil are all linked to the Sanatan Sanstha and wished in a 2009 Goa blast case the place a member of the group was killed.
Terror coaching camps
Through the course of its investigations into Gauri Lankesh’s homicide, the Karnataka Police Particular Invstigation Group (SIT) discovered {that a} Sanatan Sanstha linked group organised 19 coaching camps within the utilization of firearms, Improvised Explosive Gadgets (IEDs), and subterfuge ways throughout India between 2011 and 2017 with “visitor trainers” attending 5 of the camps held in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Karnataka.
Primarily based on descriptions supplied by these arrested and witnesses within the Gauri Lankesh case who noticed the “bomb specialists” on the coaching camps, Karnataka SIT ready sketches of the “visitor trainers,” and recognized their potential areas by technical evaluation, police sources stated in 2018.
“A lot of the photos accessible for the lacking suspects from the blast circumstances that occurred between 2006 and 2008 had been very previous. Portraits had been created in March 2018 from descriptions supplied by individuals arrested in Karnataka, and this helped to find one of many “visitor trainers,” stated a police supply.
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As many as three individuals linked to Sanatan Sanstha who had been arrested within the Gauri Lankesh homicide case, and 4 witnesses who attended these coaching camps described the presence of a “bade babaji” and 4 different “gurujis” on the camps, in keeping with paperwork positioned in court docket by the Karnataka Police within the Gauri Lankesh case.
Based on statements supplied by these males, a few of the trainers, just like the “bade babaji”, dressed as monks. Every coach had his personal space of experience, starting from petrol bombs to classy pipe bombs with electrical circuits.
Arrest of Abhinav Bharat member
One of many a number of lacking males named within the terror circumstances between 2006 and 2009, Suresh Nair, 45, who’s linked to Abhinav Bharat and the 2007 Ajmer blast case, was arrested by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) within the state’s Bharuch in November 2018.
Nair’s arrest got here after he was recognized through the investigation into the Gauri Lankesh homicide case by the Karnataka Police as certainly one of 4 trainers who attended the weapons coaching camps.
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Suresh Nair was recognized because the “bade babaji” after his arrest in Gujarat. Nair’s arrest, 11 years after he went into hiding, additionally urged that the opposite unidentified trainers on the camps who got here within the garb of “babajis” might probably be Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangra.
Primarily based on the investigations by the sketches, there are strategies that two of the thriller trainers who haven’t been recognized or arrested could have been the lacking Kalsangara and Dange, who could have attended the camps as trainers like their affiliate Suresh Nair. Nevertheless, there have been claims in Maharashtra in 2016 that the lads had been useless.
Dange, a former RSS employee, is taken into account a bomb knowledgeable, has an Interpol purple nook discover in opposition to him, and is on probably the most wished record of the NIA together with Kalsangra and Amit Hakla. Dange and Kalsangara carry a Rs 10 lakh reward, and Amit alias Ashwini Chauhan carries a Rs 5 lakh reward on his head.
Suresh Nair has been described within the Lankesh case paperwork as being current at camps in Jalna, and in Ahmedabad’s Gujarat in 2015.
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Aside from Nair, one of many different “exterior trainers” on the camps for the Sanatan Santha-linked recruits accused within the Gauri Lankesh homicide case has been recognized as Pratap Hazra, who’s linked to the right-wing Bhavani Sena outfit in West Bengal. He was arrested by the Maharashtra ATS in 2020 in reference to the Nalasapora terror case.
Additional proof of nexus
A chargesheet filed in November 2018 by a Particular Investigation Group of the Karnataka Police, which investigated the Gauri Lankesh homicide, incorporates statements by three accused and 4 witnesses concerning the weapons coaching camps.
SIT has arrested 17 individuals linked to varied fringe right-wing teams in reference to the homicide of Gauri Lankesh, which was allegedly coordinated by these previously related to Sanatan Sanstha, an affiliate of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, which allegedly created a criminal offense syndicate to focus on critics of Hindutva.
In Could this 12 months, through the Gauri Lankesh case trial, one of many witnesses who had earlier knowledgeable a court docket that he attended coaching camps the place exterior specialists additionally got here, turned hostile and denied his earlier statements.
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The 37-year-old prosecution witness, who’s concerned in grassroots politics in Karnataka’s Belagavi, was declared hostile by the state particular public prosecutor after he denied all of the statements he had made earlier than a Justice of the Peace in September 2018.
He denied recruiting and taking three individuals from Belagavi for a coaching camp in Maharashtra’s Jalna round January 2015, the place a Belagavi man, who’s an accused within the August 30, 2015, homicide of Prof M M Kalburgi in Dharwad, was additionally allegedly a participant.
In 2018, the witness said the presence of as many as 4 exterior trainers at a few of the camps who had been specialists in using explosives and subversion ways. The exterior trainers had been solely recognized as “Bade Mahatmaji”, “Chote Mahatmaji” or “Bade Babaji”, and “Bhai Saab”, and their actual identities weren’t revealed, he said.
“The members of this crime syndicate had been constantly supplied with numerous varieties of coaching within the making and utilization of weapons and explosives at many locations. Native members of the syndicate took up the accountability of organising these coaching camps on the totally different areas,” the SIT said within the chargesheet within the Gauri Lankesh homicide case.
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Amongst these accused within the Gabri Lankesh homicide and different homicide and terror circumstances who attended the coaching camps with “visitor trainers” are allegedly Amit Degwekar, Virendra Tawade, Sharad Kalaskar, Shrikant Pangarkar, Vasudev Suryavanshi, Ganesh Miskin, Amit Baddi, Bharat Kurne, Sachin Andhure, and Praveen Chatur.
The descriptions of the “babajis” had been supplied in the midst of the Lankesh case probe by three arrested males Shrikant Pangarkar, 40, a former Shiv Sena councillor from Maharashtra, Sharad Kalaskar, 26, the alleged shooter within the 2013 Narendra Dabholkar homicide case, and Vasudev Suryavanshi, 29, a mechanic who allegedly stole bikes for the murders of 4 progressive thinkers between 2015 and 2017.
Sharad Kalaskar, who attended coaching camps of the syndicate the place “visitor trainers” had been in attendance, was convicted final 12 months within the homicide of the Maharashtra rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune. He supplied particulars of the coaching camps he attended to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which investigated the Dabholkar homicide case.
Terror circumstances, and murders of Gauri Lankesh, Dabholkar, Kalburgi
One of many arrested males within the Bengaluru case has said that he was informed that the “visitor trainers” who had been specialists in making IEDs had been members of the “Aseemanand group” in a potential reference to former RSS employee Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Aseemanand, who was arrested within the blast circumstances of the 2006-2008 interval and was acquitted within the Samjhauta Categorical, Mecca Masjid, and Ajmer circumstances.
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Based on the case paperwork, the camps supplied coaching to dozens of individuals recruited by a covert unit of the Sanatan Sanstha linked to the murders of the rationalist Dabholkar, leftist thinker Govind Pansare, Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi, and Gauri Lankesh.
“The members of this organisation focused individuals whom they recognized as inimical to their beliefs and beliefs. The members strictly adopted the rules and ideas talked about in ‘Kshatra Dharma Sadhana’, a ebook printed by Sanatan Sanstha,” the SIT stated after it filed a 9,235-page chargesheet on November 23, 2018, within the Gauri Lankesh case.
The lacking Abhinav Bharat males who’ve been on the run since 2008 are believed to have been roped in to coach Sanatan Sanstha-linked individuals to make bombs when the ENT physician and Sanatan Sanstha activist Virendra Tawade was working the covert group between 2011 and 2016.
At some coaching camps — such because the one held in Belagavi in Karnataka in December 2014 — the coaching in making IEDs was supplied by Amit Degwekar, a resident of the Sanatan Sanstha ashram in Goa, who has been arrested within the Gauri Lankesh case for offering logistical and monetary assist, the Lankesh case paperwork have indicated.
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Degwekar’s roommate on the Sanatan Sanstha ashram, Malgonda Patil, was killed within the 2009 Goa blast whereas he was allegedly making an attempt to plant a bomb to disrupt a Diwali celebration opposed by the Sanatan Sanstha.