NEW DELHI – Two right-wing extremists who died in Nanded while making explosive devices received arms training in Dewas along with alleged Samjhauta Express bomber Kamal Chauhan, National Investigation Agency investigators have learnt.
“Two right-wing extremists — Himanshu Panse and Naresh Rajkondowar — died while making a bomb on April 6, 2006, in Nanded (in Maharashtra). Panse and Rajkondowar had participated in the Bagli training camp (near Dewas in MP) along with Kamal Chauhan,” an official said.
Sources said the training camp had been organised by RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi in January 2006. Joshi was shot dead in mysterious circumstances in December 2007 in Dewas.
During the camp, Joshi’s close aide Ramji Kalsangra gave a demonstration of an improvised explosive device (IED) blast.
Panse led the Nanded group, which was allegedly behind the blasts at three mosques in Maharashtra, one in 2003 and two in 2004. All took place after the Friday afternoon prayers. The same thing happened in Malegaon on September 8, 2006.
“Panse and Chauhan participating in the same training camp shows that the Nanded group was not working in isolation,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
The NIA suspects besides the Nanded blast, the death of two Bajrang Dal activists — Rajiv Mishra and Bhupinder Singh Chopra — in a bomb-making exercise in Kanpur on August 24, 2008, was also not an isolated incident.
“We have reasons to believe that Mishra and Chopra were also linked to the group led by Sunil Joshi. The kind of bomb-making material they were experimenting with was similar to the IED components used by the Joshi-led group. We suspect Mishra and Chopra may also have participated in training camps of Sunil Joshi and his close aides — Sandeep Dange and Kalsangra,” a source said. Both Dange and Kalsangra are on the run at the moment.
“We need to know whose brain was behind the group led by Joshi and who ordered his killing,” an investigator said.
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