Update: India charges Hindu nationalists for terrorist blast

After charging Hindu nationalist Swami Aseemanand and several others for their alleged involvement in the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express linking New Delhi with Lahore, India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) set to charge top Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Indresh Kumar a supplementary filing, India's Daily News & Analysis (DNA) newpaper reports.

The paper cited sources in the NIA as saying the agency is gathering evidences against some RSS leaders including Indresh Kumar, a top most member of the RSS’s central working committee for the past five years. Kumar's name has also surfaced during the investigation of the Ajmer Dargah blast, in which he was charged by the Rajasthan Anti Terrorist Squad.

“We are gathering evidences against Indresh, as he played a key role in arranging finances for terror attack on Samjhuata Express. His name might figure in the supplementary chargesheet, which we will file very soon in this case. Our investigation is not over yet,” the paper cites a senior ministry of home affairs official as saying.

When contacted by DNA, Indresh Kumar refuted all allegations, according to the paper. “Government is telling a bunch of lies in the court of law. It’s an effort to defame organisation like RSS," Kumar said.

Along with several other cases, the Saumjhauta Express bombing ignited a firestorm of controversy in India over so-called "Hindu terrorism," which Hindu nationalist groups and others decried as an inappropriate term — despite the frequent use of Islamic terrorism. Subsequently, certain newspapers and ideologues adopted the phrase "saffron terror" instead, in reference to the colors of the RSS and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party. That term, too, was decried as inappropriate.

——- Earlier ————-

Days before high-level diplomatic talks with Pakistan, India's National Investigation Agency filed charges against five men accused of perpetrating a 2007 terrorist attack on a special train that connects New Delhi and Lahore, according to a statement issued by India's Press Information Bureau (PIB).

In filing charges against the accused — Naba Kumar Sarkar, Swami Asimanand, Lokesh Sharma, Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalasangra — New Delhi is sending a not so subtle message to Islamabad that it, too, should move forward in investigating and prosecuting the alleged perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

In his confession early this year, Asimanand allegedly revealed that the bombing, as well as two other terrorist attacks on India-based mosques, were the work of fellow members of the Hindu nationalist Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), according to India Today magazine. An influential quasi-political group with more than a million members, the RSS is the parent organization of India's Bharatiya Janata Party — chief opposition to the Congress Party of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The so-called Samjhauta Express bombing and the subsequent fire killed 68 people and injured 12 other train passengers, including Indian civilians and government officials and a large number of citizens of Pakistan, PIB said.

The Samjhauta Express (also known as the Attari Express) is a bi-weekly train that runs on Wednesdays and Sundays between Delhi and Attari in India and Lahore in Pakistan. The train service was started to help improve relations between India and Pakistan, by establishing what the governments refer to as "people to people" links.

The NIA took over the case from the Haryana police in July 2010 and has since conducted investigations in various parts of the country including Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, PIB said.

The NIA alleges that Asimanand proposed a "bomb for a bomb" strategy after terrorist attacks on Hindu temples in Gujarat, Jammu and Uttar Pradesh, according to PIB. The Samjhauta Express was chosen because most of the passengers who travel in it are Pakistani citizens.

PIB said Asimanand not only provided financial and logistical support to the terror group which bombed the train, but also played a vital role in "instigating and motivating his associates to undertake this terrorist act."

Sandeep Dange, Ramji and Lokesh Sharma and others under the leadership of Sunil Joshi were instrumental in not only procuring the raw materials for Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) but also getting the bombs fabricated and planting them on the train, PIB said.

The NIA investigation has also brought some other people under "strong suspicion," PIB said. The agency will continue to probe these suspects' possible involvement in the conspiracy, as well as continue to seek the arrest several suspects whose whereabouts are unknown.