Online Desk: On the midnight of 18-19 February 2007, India-Pakistan Samjhota Express train was bombed in which 68 Pakistani nationals were killed. A Hindu extremist Sadhu Swami Aseemanand, a leader of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has confessed that he was involved in several bombings incidents. He also claimed to have been a part of the incident. In fact, ideology of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) prevails in every field at the cost of other minority groups. It is even supported by Indian defence forces secretly.
This could be judged from the incident, when on 6 April 2008 in the house of Bajrang Dal fundamentalists in Nanded, a bomb went off. The investigation proved that these militants were found in the bomb-making and attack on a mosque in Parbhani in 2003. Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra arrested a serving Lt Col Srikant Purohit along with other army officials, indicating that they were helping in training the Hindu terrorists, providing them with the military-grade explosive RDX, used in the Malegaon bombings and terrorist attacks in other Indian cities. ATS further disclosed that Lt Col Purohit confessed that in 2007, he was involved in bombing of Samjhauta Express.
India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) was convinced that Swami Aseemanand, was directly involved in the Samjhauta Express blast. Sources in NIA further pointed out that besides Lt Col Purohit, other Indian army officials were also behind that train-bombing. In this regard, a court in Panchkula, Haryana had recorded Aseemanand’s statement which confirmed the NIA inquiry. Aseemanand’s statement in the Samjhauta Express case was recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code before a magistrate.
His earlier admission was recorded in the Mecca Masjid case, which was being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Sadhu Aseemanand stuck to his confession that Hindutva radicals were behind the bomb attack on the Samjhauta Express—Aseemanand, Aka Naba and Kumar Sarkar, named absconding Hindutva militants—Ramji Kaisangra and Sandeep Dange as the key plotters in that terror attack.
Swami Aseemanand also confessed in the court that several RSS preachers and Sang activists were directly involved in planning, financing and executing Malegaon, Samjhauta Express, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blasts. He stated that various leaders of Hindu communal organizations, including Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Abhinav Bharat, Jai Vande Matram and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram were also behind these blasts.
In this connection, exposing the nexus between Bhartia Janta Party (BJP) and the RSS, the then Indian Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde disclosed on January 20, 2013 that organized training camps run by the fundamentalist parties, RSS and BJP were promoting Hindu terrorism. He also explained that these extremist parties were behind the Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Malegaon blasts. He added, “We will have to think about it (Saffron terrorism) seriously…Hindu extremist parties BJP and RSS were involved many times in Hindu-Muslim violence in India, especially Gujarat and Babri Masjid incident.”