Terror Bomb Blast of Kanpur: Tip of the Iceberg

For quite sometimes now Bajrang Dal, VHP and their bomb making have been in the news. Why is unintended explosion of bombs of Bajrang Dal or VHP not terrorism? Or the intended bomb blasts of Sanathan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagran Samiti, for that matter. The Centre has still not taken any decision regarding them.

In other words what is sauce to the goose is not sauce to the gander. These outfits of RSS and the parent body itself vaunt their extreme nationalism. How could we fight terror when one man’s terrorism is another man’s ‘nationalism’? Widespread distrust of Muslims for the current spate of bomb blasts has made people myopic towards those who profess to devote themselves in fraudulent schemes passed on as “nation building”. In fact they hardly build anything except creating hatred for Muslims.

The authorities using investigative agencies and police keep the bomb blast activities of such extreme nationalists [read, religious fanatics] sub rosa. They have a rich provenance to derive their sources. Indian Express had once front paged the theft of explosive material from the government ordnance factories. Even a scrap monger of Ahmednager had high grade explosive material in his scrap yard for sale around the time when serial bombs exploded in Malegaon, September 8 2008. No other than the police commissioner there had hinted the link between the two. The scrap monger’s associate in the business mysteriously committed suicide after absconding when the police raided the place. However the police swept all the evidence and doubts under the carpet of illicit hoarding for money and not terror.

Bajrang Dal activists Rajeev Mishra and Bhupender Singh Chopra [a convener of Bajrang Dal in Kanpur] died while they were making bombs on Sunday August 24 2008. The national convener of BJ Prakash Sherma has acknowledged that the two were members of BD and he knew them personally since he hails from Kanpur. They wanted to take revenge of the bombings in Ahmedabad on July 26 which were allegedly blamed on the revenge the SIMI wanted to take for the pogroms of Muslims in 2002. Nearly eight kilograms of bomb making material was recovered from the spot. According to the IG of police, Kanpur, “The recovery shows that a massive explosion was on the cards.” In fact one officer said even half of Kanpur could be destroyed by the cache. Grenades recovered resemble the ones used by the army. Indeed, the father of Rajeev Mishra, Shiv Saran Mishra has said that his son and Bhupender Singh had attended a camp of training at Lucknow run by Bajrang Dal on June 13 2001. This camp trained the BD activists in ammunition.


How can there be transparency when some experienced government servants and armed forces personnel after retirement choose to work for Bajrang Dal or VHP or RSS. They help not only making of bombs but provide logistical support if things take a different turn than expected. Teesta Setalvad says that the CBI did not find it necessary to probe the possible role of the Bhonsala Military School in the training meted out to young recruits of the sangh’s bomb-making brigade. Given this mindset of the officers of such agencies what hope is there for transparency and fairness? What is revealed by one agency is whittled down by the other. The ATS investigation is stymied by the CBI and therefore confusion prevails and suspicion against the Muslims deepens.

BS Moonje was not only the founder of RSS but also the founder of the Central Hindu Military Education Society at Nashik (1937). He founded the Bhonsla Military School, one at Nashik and the other at Nagpur. One must go back in history to know that the purpose of Moonje’s tour of Europe, particularly fascist Italy, was to find out ways of killing more than half a dozen people at one go. Naresh Rajkondwar, Himanshu Panse and their accomplices[Maroti Keshav Wagh, Yogesh Deshpande aka Vidulkar, Gururaj Jairam Tuptear and Rahul Mnohar Pande] who survived were trained at the Bhonsla Military School in Nagpur close to the headquarters of RSS. They had not only conducted research on the line of Moonje but had gone far beyond. They used the house of a retired executive engineer, Laxman Gundayya Rajkondwar, to make bombs. The government agencies did try to cover up as fire crackers worth Rs 1,20 000 were dumped in no time after the accidental explosion in Nanded. Who gave them this logistical support to face the difficulty of legal action if and when it comes? Similarly an advocate of Nanded district court Ekate helped Rahul Manohar Pande to abscond from the police and Dr Deshpande treated his wounds sustained in the explosion without informing the police. Both these professionals are free as they have the bail in their pocket. Imagine the hundreds of SIMI members languishing in jail even after obtaining bail but rearrested on all kinds of cooked up cases. This, not to mention the biggest of accomplices in absconding, Narender Modi harbouring absconder Babu Bajrangi in the Gujarat guest house at Mount Abu.

There are several known instances of accidental bomb blasts at the time of assembling the bombs. “In 1992there was a bomb blast in the VHP office in Madhya Pradesh, where one VHP member died and two were injured while making bombs. Then in 2002, there was a bomb blast in a temple in Mhow. When the police arrested the VHP activists after investigation, they confessed that they were even given training to manufacture bombs”. There was bomb blast in Nanded April 2006, Again there was bomb blast in Nanded February 2007 where a Shiv Sena pramukh died while allegedly handling liquid explosive material but pretension was that he was handling biscuit cartons. There were two bomb blasts at two places in Tamil Nadu in March 2008. Police arrested some VHP activists who confessed to the crime of making bombs. Kanpur August 24 2008 explosion is the latest in the series. These unintended or accidental blasts could be the very few instances of failure which eclipse the hundred other such bomb makings where the BD and VHP have succeeded. But as the governments in Delhi and in the states have chosen not to bother about these accidentals they remain sub rosa, off the screen of the investigative agencies. Hence the official line that they are not terrorist activities. May be, after all, the words of Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad former chief, KP Raghuvanshi are true that these bombs were meant for pooja.

False pretexts are in galore. In the first Nanded explosion, fire crackers, in the second, biscuits, in Kanpur the third criminal Piyus told the hostel mates to vacate SS Misra’s hostel as he was going to repair electricity and therefore short circuit causing explosion as in Nanded as a stand by probability. In such cases you can fool all the people all the time.

SIMI was banned without a shred of proof of its involvement in bomb blasts, at least till Justice Geeta Mittal decided the case last time August 2008. In contrast Bajrang Dal, Sanatan Sanstha, Hindu Janjagran Samiti, VHP and RSS have been treated with stark discrimination. . They are no where near even any wild suggestion of a ban.

Even so the latest incident in Kanpur flies in the face of the willful investigation of SIMI by the intelligence agencies and the police in the cases of Jama Masjid Delhi April 2006. Samjhota Express February 2007. Ajmer October 2007, and Malegaon September 2006. But who knows it could also be Bangalore and Ahmedabard July 2008.