By IANS,
New Delhi : A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team Saturday questioned Lt. Col. Shrikant Purohit in Mumbai in connection with a blast in Nanded, Maharashtra, in 2006, a CBI official said here.
Arrested for his involvement in the Sep 29 Malegaon blast, that killed five people, Purohit came under the CBI scanner.
“A team led by joint director Arun Kumar reached Mumbai yesterday (Friday) and was interrogating the army official today (Saturday) in presence of ATS (anti-terrorism squad, Maharashtra) officials in connection with the Nanded blast,” the official said.
On April 6, 2006, a blast in the house of a retired executive engineer of the irrigation department and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activist Lakshman Rajkondawar claimed two lives and left three seriously injured.
Rajkondawar’s son Naresh Lakshman Rajkondawar and Himanshu Venkatesh Panse were killed in the blast while four others – Yogesh Ravindra Deshpande Vidholkar, Maroti Kishore Wagh, Gururaj Jayaram Tuptewar and Rahul Manoharao Pande – were seriously injured.
Though initially police dismissed it as a firecracker explosion, investigations revealed that Rajkondwar’s house doubled as a bomb-making factory. The incident was the first indication of the existence of home-grown right wing terrorism.
Following his arrest, Pande said that Himanshu Panse had planned the bomb blasts at mosques in Jalna, Purna and Parbhani in 2003 and 2004 and he had accompanied Panse to Jalna.
The ATS which investigated the case, found that Panse had organised a training camp at the Bhonsala Military School in Nagpur, where the alleged conspirators of the Malegaon blasts had met Sep 16.