Swami Aseemanand, arrested for his involvement in the 2007 Samjhauta train blast case, has accused the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of conspiring against him and claimed that he was not involved in any bombing.
“I am innocent. The NIA has no proof against me and this arrest is illegal,” he told journalists outside a special court hearing the cases here on Monday.
“This is a conspiracy to implicate me. They are torturing me and putting pressure on me to give wrong statements.”
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During the in-camera proceedings, the NIA submitted the “deficient documents” related to the case and told the court that it would file a supplementary charge sheet against other accused soon.
“The NIA has submitted some documents in support of the charge sheet in the court today [Monday]. The NIA lawyer told the court that they will submit more documents to strengthen their case during the next hearing,” Manveer Singh Rathi, Aseemanand's lawyer said.
“The NIA said they are collecting documentary proofs against Sadhvi Pragya and other people and those proofs will be produced before the court during the next hearing.”
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Aseemanand said: “I was forced by the NIA to confess that I was involved in the blast... the proof against me is fabricated.”
The NIA had on June 20 charged Aseemanand and four others – Lokesh Sharma, Sandeep Dange, Ramchandra Kalasangra and Sunil Joshi (now dead) – with triggering explosions in the cross-border Samjhauta Express in 2007 that left 68 people dead. The charge sheet said Aseemanand was the mastermind and instigated others to carry out the attack.
Dange and Kalasangra have been declared proclaimed offenders in the case and are currently on the run.
Aseemanand and Sharma are already in judicial custody in Ambala jail. Aseemanand, a member of the Hindu group Abhinav Bharat, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on November 19, 2010 from Haridwar in Uttarakhand for his alleged role in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad, in which 14 people were killed.
The NIA had questioned Aseemanand about his role in the train blasts on February 18, 2007, at Diwana village near the industrial town of Panipat, 160 km from here.
The next hearing is slated for August 17.