Is Kanpur The Missing Link?

Is Kanpur The Missing Link? The Malegaon blasts accused may have vital clues to the Kanpur explosion in which Bajrang Dal workers were killed, reports SRAWAN SHUKLA PRAGYA SINGH Thakur’s arrest in Mumbai in connection with the Malegaon blast has forced the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) to reopen the otherwise closed Rajiv Nagar blast case. The August 24 explosion in this Kanpur locality killed two active Bajrang Dal workers, Bhupendra Singh Chopra and Rajiv Mishra, a Reliance Communications employee. A huge cache of explosives recovered from the site led to the suspicion that both were making bombs for carrying out terror attacks. Although there was enough material and circumstantial evidence against the two Bajrang Dal activists, the ATS closed the case surprisingly quickly. “Since the blast killed both bomb makers, we were unable to come to a definite conclusion and reach the mastermind,” a senior ATS officer told TEHELKA. After the Malegaon blasts, however, and the arrests of Pragya Thakur and fellow suspect Major (retd) Prabhakar Kulkarni, the UP ATS’s hopes of cracking the Kanpur case and gathering enough evidence to nail the Bajrang Dal have revived. A Kanpur police team was in Mumbai recently in search of connections; forensic reports have indicated that the material recovered from the Kanpur blast site was similar to that at Malegaon. The UP ATS also sought Thakur and Kulkarni’s phone records, which, though Kanpur ATS chief AK Jain refused comment, may have proved fruitful. Police sources claim to have come across a few numbers in the records which may connect one of those involved in the Kanpur bomb making with Kukarni through common links in Madhya Pradesh. Terror base? The room where the explosion took place (above), and timers found by the police (below) Photo: GAURAV Chopra and Mishra’s cellphone and landline call details show that both were in constant touch with Hindu activists in MP and Maharashtra.Chopra was a frontline Bajrang Dal leader who, in 2000, imparted firearms training to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, its Durga Vahini women’s wing, and the Shiv Sena’s Rashtriya Mukti Vahini. He has also trained Hindutva activists in arms use in Ayodhya, Lucknow, Kanpur and other places. “He used to be called the UP Bajrang Dal’s ‘bomber’ and ‘shooter’, and was a close associate of a senior Bajrang Dal leader in Kanpur,” TEHELKA’s ATS source disclosed. Chopra was arrested in 1992, in connection with riots in Kanpur after the demolition of the Babri mosque. As many as five cases were slapped against him; a Bajrang Dal/VHP legal team worked to ensure he was acquitted. Mishra, his friends say, was a “religious person” who would often talk about “giving a fitting reply to terror acts by Muslim fundamentalists”. TEHELKA’s investigations reveal that he came in contact with Chopra a few years ago and provided him an easy hideout for his bombmaking at a nine-room house his father, Shiv Narain Mishra, owned in Rajiv Nagar. The house had been converted into a hostel, where room no. 1 was reserved for Mishra, who would come down from Lucknow every weekend. On August 24, Mishra arrived at the hostel room at around 2 pm and was joined by Chopra a few minutes later. At around 2.30 pm, neighbours reported a deafening sound and seeing the entire area fill with thick, black smoke. “I was sitting outside room no. 5 chatting with a friend; the blast was so powerful that a few plaster chips hit us,” says hosteler Varun Bajpai. Other Rajiv Nagar residents thought at first that the blast was a gas cylinder explosion. Dharam Raj Singh, who lives across the road from the hostel, rushed to help and says that he found Mishra’s body totally blown to pieces while Chopra was still alive. “He was very badly injured and was crying out. We called the police and they took him to hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries,” claims Singh. The police recovered one full and eight empty iron shells shaped like army hand-grenades, timers, explosive material and detonators from the site. They were also able to recover Chopra’s cellphone from the site; a call made to the last dialed number connected to a Bajrang Dal leader, who answered the phone but switched it off as soon as he got to know that Chopra had been killed. Meanwhile, Mishra’s father has claimed ignorance of his son’s activities at the hostel. “I know nothing. I don’t believe my son was involved in any terror activities as the police and the media allege,” he says. Two days after the blast, the police received a phone call that led to a chilling discovery: about 10 kgs of explosives and grenade shells were found abandoned barely 200 metres away from Chopra’s house, under the Kakadeo police circle. A kilogram of potassium chlorate, a bottle of silver nitrate and a small quantity of ammonium nitrate were also recovered. An immediate raid on Chopra’s house yielded about three kgs of a “suspicious powder” on the rooftop. A map of Ferozabad was also found with five red dots on Muslim-dominated localities. “It seems the bombs the duo was preparing were meant for use in these areas,” TEHELKA’s ATS source says. Police teams were then dispatched across the country, to Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Lucknow and Varanasi to ascertain whether the evidence recovered in Kanpur had any similarity with material collected at blast sites in the other cities. Raids were carried out in factories in Kanpur and Agra and a team was sent to Delhi to attempt to locate where the grenade shells were moulded. So far this has not yielded results. Groping in the dark, the police and the ATS interrogated over 100 persons and placed around 200 mobile numbers that Mishra and Chopra frequently used under surveillance. These have not yielded much. Sunil and Subod Dixit, close friends of Chopra and Mishra and named with Chopra in the 1992 cases were held. The ATS carried out a battery of psychological tests, including narcoanalysis, on the two in the first week of September but these, too, led only to deadends. Both were let off. With the Malegaon investigations, the UP ATS hopes to find a more satisfactory conclusion to the Kanpur case. It may, however, be noted that Kanpur is also the hometown and Lok Sabha constituency of Union Minister of State for Home Sri Prakash Jaiswal. Though the Centre has taken a keen interest in the Malegaon investigations, it has not demonstrated an equal interest in the Kanpur probe, suggesting a fear that it might well jeopardise Jaiswal’s poll prospects.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 45, Dated Nov 15, 2008