PUNE/MUMBAI: Based on the interrogations of the four Hindu terrorists including a woman priest arrested by Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Friday in connection with the bomb blasts in Malegaon and Modasa in Gujarat on Sept. 29, an ATS team from Mumbai has arrested three more people in the Madhya Pradesh capital of Bhopal.
An ATS team has also arrested two former Indian Army officers in Pune in connection with the blasts bringing the total number of arrests to nine. The ATS team in Bhopal is expected to make more arrests and would soon leave for Gwalior and other cities in Madhya Pradesh. According to ATS sources in Pune, the two former army officers were arrested on Friday evening by the ATS Pune unit chief Inspector Peter Lobo.
The accused are alleged to have played key role in providing training in executing the blasts. Lobo refused to share the details of the accused, but police sources said that both the army officers had links with the terror trail and were members of militant Hindu outfits.
During interrogations by the ATS in Nashik, the four arrested Hindu terrorists including the 38-year-old lady priest Pragya Singh Thakur arrested from Indore, Dewas and Surat on Thursday, said that they had triggered the bomb blasts in Malegaon and Modasa driven by revenge for the bomb blasts carried out by suspected Muslim terrorists in Delhi and Ahmedabad.
The Hindu extremist Shiv Sena party leader and former speaker of the Lok Sabha, Manohar Joshi, addressing reporters in Mumbai yesterday said that the Hindu militant groups would not have taken such a step if the government had taken timely action against terror groups. “People are forced to indulge in such acts and pick up arms when they don’t get justice,” he said.
In Nashik, about 100 party workers of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) went on rampage yesterday morning vandalizing the offices of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and also the office of the militant Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), shouting slogans against the involvement of the Hindu terrorists from these two Hindu outfits.
