Sanatan Sanstha faces heat as Maharashtra relooks old blasts case

 

Hindu right-wing organisation Sanatan Sanstha, whose members are under investigation for the murders of left-wing intellectuals and rationalists like Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh, is facing fresh trouble over bomb blasts in Mumbai and Goa more than ten years ago.

 

According to sources here, the anti-terror squad of the Maharashtra Police has questioned several past and present members of the Sanstha regarding the bomb blasts in Mumbai and Goa in 2008 and 2009. Crude bombs were set up in theatres in Thane and Navi Mumbai where plays and the movie Jodha Akbar, opposed by the organisation, were featured. Two Sanstha members who were arrested in the case were subsequently acquitted.

 

Similarly in 2009, crude bombs that were to be planted at a Diwali celebration in Goa exploded while being transported. Two members of the organisation lost their lives in the incident.

 

Sources say the recovery of explosives from the premises of a Sanstha activist near Mumbai last August has led investigators to look into the 2008 blasts case in Maharashtra as well. Police officials had earlier said that members of the Sanstha and the Hindu Jangruti Samiti were planning to set off bombs at the Sunburn Music Festival in Pune.

Several members of the organisation have been arrested so far and are being questioned by police teams from Maharashtra and Karnataka.

 

Though then Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had sent a detailed report to the central government recommending a ban on the Sanstha, the Union Home Ministry under the then minister Sushilkumar Shinde did not do so on the grounds that there was not enough against the organisation, which is based in Goa.