MUMBAI/PATNA: The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) yesterday claimed to have made a breakthrough in the bomb blasts in Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat with the arrest of 4 people. The blasts killed six Muslims on Sept. 29.
Among those arrested was a 25-year-old woman priest Pragya Singh Thakur from Surat in Gujarat, who was closely associated with the Hindu militant outfit, Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
The others arrested were identified as Shyam Shahu, Dilip Nahar and Shivnarain Singh, all from Indore, and Dharmendra Bairagi from Dewas town in Madhya Pradesh. All the accused have been brought to Mumbai for interrogation.
Pragya’s relatives in Surat told journalists that they had broken all ties with the accused several years ago. Chandrapal Thakur, father of Pragya, however, defended his daughter and said that she would never have been involved in such acts.
According to Sukhvinder Singh, the ATS additional commissioner of police, an ATS team from Nashik had been camping in Indore for three weeks and returned to Mumbai with the suspects on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray may now face a murder charge after the father of Pawan Kumar, the youth who was allegedly killed by MNS activists in Mumbai, filed a case against the party chief in a Bihar court yesterday.
Pawan’s father Jagdish Prasad filed a murder case against Raj under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in the court of chief judicial magistrate in Biharsharif, the district headquarters of Nalanda, about 100 km from Patna, court sources said. Prasad has accused Raj and MNS activists of killing his son in Mumbai last Sunday.
— With input from agencies
