(File photo of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur)
National Investigation Agency or NIA is likely to file a supplementary chargesheet in 2006 Malegaon blasts naming Aseemanand and Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. The chargesheet filed yesterday in a Mumbai court did not name the two. NIA sources told NDTV that although the two right wing leaders do not figure in the first chargesheet "it should not be read as a clean chit to either of them."
12 accused, including Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit and Aseemanand are already in jail for a blast that occurred in Malegaon, a communally-sensitive town in Nashik district of Maharashtra, in 2008.
Aseemanand is also facing charges in the 2007 blast in Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid.
The NIA had on Wednesday filed a chargesheet against four people who were arrested in connection with the 2006 blasts. Lokesh Sharma, Dhan Singh, Rajendra Chaudhary and Manohar Narwaria were arrested in December last year.
"The current chargesheet deals with the operational aspect. The decision to file the chargesheets against the four accused arrested in December was taken to prevent them from getting out on mandatory bail," the sources added. According to the existing law, a suspect is entitled to bail automatically if formal charges are not pressed.
"Aseemanand and others cannot walk out on bail yet since there are several cases against them. We will in all probability file a supplementary chargesheet in this case as well," the sources confirm to NDTV.
The chargesheet also does not name the nine Muslim youth who were arrested for the '06 blasts, seven of whom were granted bail only in November 2011. (
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The blasts it says was a revenge attack planned by the four men from Indore, for attacks on Hindu temples and Shramjeevi Express.
The multiple bomb explosions in Malegaon had occurred near a mosque on September 8, 2006, killing 37 people and injuring over 100.