‘The Hindu terror’ narrative linked to 2008 Malegaon blasts

The crowd that had gathered at Malegaon's Shakeel Goods Compound on the night of September 29, 2008, for the ‘esha’ —the last namaz of the day, paid scant attention to the LML Freedom motorcycle bearing the registration plate MH 15 P 4572.

- Mayura Janwalkar and Kanchan Chaudhari

Butas the devotees bowed in prayer, two RDX bombs strapped to the seat of the motorcycle went off at 9.35 pm leaving six dead and 95 injured.

This was the second terror attack in Malegaon. On September 8, 2006, on the day of Shab-e-Baraat, four bombs had gone off at the crowded Hamidia mosque complex killing 31 and injuring 312 persons.

There was still no clarity on who had set off the explosions on Shab-e-Baraat when the blast happened at Shakeel Goods Compound twoyears on. The Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance that governed Maharashtra in 2008 was under immense public pressure to find the perpetrators of these blasts, and handed over the investigation to the Maharashtra Anti-Terror-ism Squad, which was headed by Hemant Karkare. Karkare was killed shortly after in the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai.

The first lead to the possible perpetrators came from the LML Freedom motorcycle left partially undamaged in the blast. The registration number was fake and so was the chassis number but forensic experts managed to retrieve the right chassis number and subsequently the correct registration number — FJ-5 BR 1920. The motorcycle, they learnt, was registered in the name of a woman from Madhya Pradesh, Pragya Chandrapal Singh Thakur, who had taken sanyas and who wore a mukut (tiara) and moved around with an entourage that carried a throne for her to sit on, said a former ATS investigator.

The narrative diverges here.