CBI names four of Hindu group for Macca Masjid blast

June 10: The Central Bureau of Investigation filed a memo in the 14th additional chief metropolitan magistrate court at Nampally on Thursday seeking the arrest of four activists of a Hindu terror group for triggering the Mecca Masjid blast.




In all, five persons were killed in the blast that took place on May 18, 2007. Following this, the court issued prisoners transit warrant for Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma and ordered the CBI to produce them. They are now in Ajmer jail in connection with Ajmer Darga blast and are likely to be brought to the city on Monday.



The CBI alleged that these two accused conspired to carry out the explosion in Mecca Masjid and aided the others.



They also purchased SIM cards and mobile phone devices which were e used in the bomb placed in the masjid. Devender used a fake driving license to buy the SIM cards.



The CBI has established the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer blasts were part of single conspiracy. According to the CBI prosecutor, the bombs used in the blast were made by Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kaslangara alias Ramji Kaslangara.



The two bomb experts come to the city two months ahead of the blast and stayed here. The CBI thinks they made the bombs using RDX and planted two of them Mecca Masjid and two in Ajmer.



Sandeep and Ramchandra are absconding and a manhunt is on to nab them. The CBI is also looking into the role of Swami Ashimanand in the case.

CBI tortured us, helps tell NHRC

Arushi case

The counsel for Rajkumar, an accused in the Arushi-Hemraj double murder, has approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), saying the domestic help was "tortured" by CBI officers during the investigation.

In his complaint filed on Thursday before the NHRC, Rajkumar's lawyer Naresh Yadav alleged that the CBI "tortured" the three domestic helps — Rajkumar, Krishna and Vijay Mandal — while conducting narco-analysis tests on them in 2008 to get confessions. According to Yadav's complaint (Newsline has a copy), the three were "falsely implicated" in the case.

Yadav has given the complaint to NHRC on behalf of Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal.

He also submitted video recordings of tests conducted on the trio. "The videos show CBI officers were putting words in their mouth and torturing them to confess to the murders," Yadav told Newsline. He said the NHRC received his complaint, and he hoped for a "fair inquiry by the Commission".

Yadav has alleged in his complaint that besides torturing them, the investigating agency also kept the trio in custody illegally.

Yadav also demanded compensation for Rajkumar and Mandal for the mental and physical torture they underwent. Yadav said he filed the complaint against CBI after a TV channel recently aired footage of the narco tests of Rajkumar, Krishna and Mandal, conducted in June and July 2008.

Krishna worked as compounder with Arushi's dentist parents Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, Rajkumar worked as household help with Talwars' family friends Durranis, and Mandal was a household help in Talwars' neighbourhood.

The CBI had claimed on the basis of their narco tests that the three were involved in the murders. But all three got bail in September 2008 after the investigators failed to get any evidence against them.

While the agency had said no pressure was applied on the trio during their interrogation and tests, Rajkumar had alleged after he got bail in September 2008 that he was "physically assaulted by CBI officers and forced to confess".

Arushi Talwar was found murdered in the family's flat in Jalvayu Vihar, Sector-25 Noida, on May 16, 2008. The family's household help Hemraj's body was found on the terrace the following day.

The CBI had last month conducted narco, lie-detection, brain mapping tests on the Talwar couple at the forensic lab in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

A new CBI team is probing the case at present but there has been no headway yet. An investigating officer from the agency today refused to comment on the issue.