MUMBAI: After four days of intensive interrogation by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) officials in the presence of the Indian Army officers, the ATS finally arrested Srikant Purohit, a serving lieutenant colonel of the Indian Army for his role in the Malegaon bomb blasts of Sept. 29. The army subsequently suspended Purohit and allowed his custodial arrest by the ATS.
Additional Commissioner of Police (ATS) Parambir Singh said that Lt. Col. Purohit was put under arrest yesterday. He was to be produced in a court in Nashik later in the evening. Singh, however, refused to reveal the charges framed against Purohit.
It’s for the first time in the history of the Indian Army that a senior serving officer had been arrested on the charges of being involved in a terror related act. According to ATS sources, the police are alleged to have found links between Purohit and retired army Maj. Ramesh Upadhya, who was also arrested earlier, for their role in Malegaon blasts. The police have found five SMS sent by Purohit to Upadhya, after the blasts.
Purohit is also alleged to be the founder member of Abhinav Bharat, the right-wing militant Hindu outfit. In one of the SMS sent, Purhohit had instructed Upadhya to change his mobile number and had also attended one of the meetings conducted by the blasts accused.
The arrested army officer, a resident of Pune, is with the Intelligence Corps and was doing a course in Arabic in Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh when he was detained at the instance of the ATS and was moved to Mumbai for investigations. The ATS sources said that Purohit interacted with extremists and ex-servicemen and was in contact with various right-wing militant Hindu outfits and drew them into the fold of Abhinav Bharat organization.
Meanwhile, the ATS is seriously considering of clamping the draconian Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) against the nine Hindu terrorists arrested so far in the blasts case. Advocate Amin Solkar, who is representing the 20 alleged Indian Mujahedeen men accused of terror acts in Ahmedabad and Delhi, and against whom the police had slapped MCOCA, said that it would be unfair if the ATS does not invoke the act against the Hindu terrorists arrested for the Malegaon blasts.
In another related development, Hemani Savarkar, president of the hardcore Hindu militant Hindu Mahasabha party, said in Pune yesterday that if it was proved that Malegaon blasts was executed by the Hindus, she would consider it a reaction to Islamic terrorism.
