On 17 January, the Nanded district court rejected a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh member’s application requesting he be made a witness in an ongoing trial pertaining to the 2006 Nanded bomb blast. Yashwant Shinde, the former RSS man, had earlier argued before the court that he had “personal knowledge of the conspiracy” that led to the blast, which was “hatched by the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal.” Shinde also accused Milind Parande, the current general secretary of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, of masterminding the blast and requested that he be added as an accused in the case. Since 29 August, Shinde has appeared before the court on five hearings. The dismissal of Shinde’s application weakens the investigation into the larger conspiracy behind several blasts.
Shinde claimed that he was involved in a bomb-making training camp at a resort near Pune, in July 2003, which was attended by several others. The conspiracy led to at least three bomb blasts at mosques in Parbhani, Purna and Jalna, besides the accidental Nanded blast. Until 2006, the previous bomb blasts were treated as isolated incidents that were unconnected with each other. Shinde’s application had claimed the same conspiracy also led to the 2006 Malegaon blast, the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast, the 2007 Ajmer Sharif blast, the 2007 Mecca Masjid Hyderabad blast and the 2008 Malegaon blast. Rakesh Dhawade, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast is also an accused in the Nanded case. If Shinde’s claims are true, the bomb blasts borne out of the conspiracy have killed more than one hundred and twenty people, a majority of whom were Muslim.
The Nanded court, though, dismissed Shinde’s application on the same ground as the prosecution had previously suggested. As the Nanded blast had links with several other bomb blasts during the mid-2000s, the CBI had been the prosecuting agency in the case. The agency investigated the case from February 2007 to December 2020. They had filed two chargesheets by March 2009 and a closure report in December 2020 before the Nanded trial court—all of which is public knowledge only as a result of Shinde’s application.