Thane – Two key members of Hindutva Terror outfit – Sanatan Sanstha – confessed about planting Bombs in Thane. The video was secretly recorded by undercover investigative journalists of India Today.
The Sanatan Sanstha, with centres spread across Maharashtra, Goa and elsewhere in India, is, however, no stranger to controversy. Its name figured in the Maharashtra Anti Terror Squad’s chargesheet for bomb attacks outside theatres and cinema halls in 2008 — allegedly over ‘objectionable’ depiction of Hinduism in certain films and dramas.
Seven people were injured when a bomb went off in the parking lot of the theatre in Thane.
A trial court in 2011 had acquitted the accused Sanatan Sanstha members. But the news channel’s exposé revealed that the Hindutva organisation may have played a role in the attacks.
One of the two men who the channel talked to admitted seven years after his acquittal that he had planted the explosives outside the theatre in Vashi, India Today claimed.
All these years, the Sanstha has vehemently denied the accusations. But now, India Today TV’s SIT has secured evidence suggesting it might have played a role in the attacks.
Since August this year, the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad has arrested seven Hindutva men for allegedly conspiring to carry out bomb blasts across the state and recovered crude bombs, detonators and firearms from their possession.
Vaibhav Raut – co-founder of Cow protection group – was the first to be arrested on August 9 after a raid at his home in Mumbai’s Nalasopara locality. His group Hindu Govansh Raksha Samiti is said to be affiliated to the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, an offshoot of the Sanatan Sanstha.
Sharad Kalaskar, one of the seven men arrested, is also an accused in the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar.
