The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday cleared senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Indresh Kumar, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and two others of all charges in the 2007 Ajmer dargah blast case in which three persons were killed. The NIA said no evidence was found against them.
In its supplementary closure report filed in the NIA Special Court here, the agency said it did not find any role of Mr. Kumar, Sadhvi Pragya, Ramesh Venkatrao and Samandar alias Rajendra Chaudhary in carrying out the blast at the 13th century shrine of Sufi mystic Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti.
Special judge Dinesh Gupta fixed April 17 for deciding whether the court would accept or reject the closure report.
The court also expressed displeasure over the NIA’s inability to arrest three absconding accused, who figure in the agency’s list of most-wanted people with cash rewards against them.
The suspects on the run are Sandeep Dange, Suresh Nair and Ram Chandra Kalsangra. The court asked the NIA Director-General to file a progress report on the efforts to arrest the three fugitives.
Life term
The NIA Special Court had on March 22 sentenced two RSS activists , Bhavesh Patel and Devendra Gupta, to life imprisonment after convicting them of carrying out the explosion inside the dargah during Ramzan on October 11, 2007.
Seven accused, including former RSS activist Aseemanand, were acquitted in the case.
In one of the charge sheets, the names of Mr. Kumar and Sadhvi Pragya had appeared as suspects. Though the NIA had claimed that at a meeting Mr. Kumar had asked activists to work secretly, it later submitted that it had not found any prosecutable evidence against him.
Sadhvi Pragya, accused of being a member of the extremist outfit Abhinav Bharat, was acquitted in February in the RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi murder case in Dewas in December 2007. Joshi was convicted in the dargah blast case.
Contempt notice
The court also issued notices to the Kerala Chief Secretary and District Collector of Indore, asking why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them for their failure to reply to the earlier notices seeking information on the properties of the three accused who are absconding.
The dargah blast case was initially investigated by the Rajasthan Anti-Terrorism Squad and was later transferred to the NIA, which re-registered the case on April 6, 2011. There were as many as 149 witnesses, 26 of whom turned hostile. The NIA filed three supplementary charge sheets in the case.
