By TCN Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is believed to have got concrete evidence of the involvement of Swami Aseemanand, a Hindu ultra-right leader attached to RSS, in the Samjhauta Express blasts that killed 68 people in 2007. NIA has taken Assemanand on 15 days’ remand for questioning.
NIA investigators reportedly said Aseemanand held a meeting on February 11, 12 and 13 in 2006 in Gujarat’s Dang district and decided to carry out bomb attacks in different places, including on the Samjhauta Express train that runs from Delhi to Lahore twice a week.
Swami Aseemanand
For the terror strikes, it is believed, Assemanand had roped in Sandeep Dange, an engineering graduate, and Ramji Kalsangra, an electrician, to build the improvised explosive devices used in the blasts.
Around midnight on February 18, 2007 — a day before Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was to arrive in Delhi to resume peace talks — bombs were set off on the train. The incident occurred after the train passed Diwana station near Panipat in Haryana, 80 km north of Delhi. Of the 68 killed, most were Pakistani civilians, besides some Indian citizens and army jawans guarding the train.
Born as Jatin Chatterjee in West Bengal, Swami Aseemanand got a masters degree in Physics from the Burdwan University. He joined the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, inspired by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1978.
His name surfaced during the probe into various terror attacks including the blasts at the Mecca Masjid on May 18, 2007, Ajmer on October 11, 2007 and Malegaon and Modasa on September 29, 2008. He was arrested from Haridwar in November this year in connection with the Mecca Masjid blast.
Aseemanand, arrested for the Mecca Masjid blasts case by the CBI, was brought to Panchkula in Madhya Pradesh by a team of the NIA, accompanied by Andhra Pradesh police officials on December 29. He has been remanded to NIA’s custody for 15 days.