Curiously, former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, now facing extortion cases, was the Additional Commissioner of the Maharashtra ATS when it probed the Malegaon blast case.
New Delhi: It was an era of utmost vindictive politics. A group of politicians and their cohorts thrived, trying to discover a phrase called 'Hindu terror'. Eminent Hindu leaders, including the likes of RSS leader Indresh Kumar, BJP lawmaker Sadhvi Pragya and the incumbent UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, were all falsely implicated. Senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar has every right today to demand an 'apology' from Congress and UPA's self-styled 'secular' champions.
A key witness on Tuesday told the Special NIA court that he was threatened, tortured and kept in illegal custody by the Mumbai ATS and forced to take the names of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders and also UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who was then a BJP MP.
A series of bomb blasts took place on September 8, 2006, in Malegaon, a town in the Nashik district of Maharashtra. The state was then under Congress-NCP rule and the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), though initially suspected and blamed the bombings on the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), later in the charge sheet, the central government-run NIA and ATS blamed it on Abhinav Bharat, and several leaders were implicated.
Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Lt Col Purohit were quickly arrested in connection with the blast, and gradually the UPA regime's favourite phrases "Hindu terror" and "Saffron terror" were popularised by politicians and, of course, a section of pro-Left media. 220 witnesses have been examined in the case so far, and 15 of them, including a few, turned hostile.
Therefore, as the news spread, it made sense for Indresh Kumar to demand an apology from Congress and other UPA leaders. "The truth is the whole of Congress was involved (in the conspiracy). They all should apologise. They criminalised Indian politics," he said.
Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, now facing multiple cases of extortion, was the Additional Commissioner of the ATS when it probed the Malegaon blast case. The witness was deposed before the special National Investigation Agency court, and the ATS recorded his statement when it probed the case before the NIA took over.
During his deposition, the witness told the court that the then senior ATS officer Param Bir Singh and another officer had threatened him to name Yogi Adityanath, and four other RSS leaders, including Indresh Kumar. The ATS also tortured him, the witness said.
Swami Aseemanand, Indresh Kumar, Kakaji and Deodharji were also implicated.
