Panchkula/Jaipur, Jul 19: Right wing Hindu group member Swami Aseemanand on Monday claimed he was not involved in the Samjhauta Express blast case and was made to give a confession under duress by National Investigation Agency. “I was forced by NIA to confess that I was involved in the blast...I am not involved in the case.... The proof against me is also fabricated by NIA,” Aseemanand told reporters outside the special court hearing the case in Panchkula in Haryana.
Separately, in Ajmer dargah blast case in a Jaipur court, NIA charged Aseemanand and seven others with murder and carrying out terrorist activities as the agency filed its second charge sheet in connection with the explosion that had rocked the sufi shrine in 2007 killing three persons. In Panchkula, the court fixed August 17 as the next date for hearing on the charge sheet filed in the case by NIA. During the in-camera proceedings in the case, NIA said it would soon file a supplementary charge sheet against some other accused.
NIA sought more time from the court so that it could file the supplementary charge sheet in the case, defence counsel Manveer Rathi said.NIA had on June 20 charged Aseemanand and four others with triggering explosions in the cross-border Samjhauta Express in 2007 that left 68 people, mostly Pakistanis, dead. In the charge sheet filed before the vacation court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Kanchan Mahi, the NIA had accused Aseemanand, Sunil Joshi (now dead), Lokesh Sharma, Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalasangra alias Ramji of hatching a criminal conspiracy to carry out the bomb blasts in the train.
The second charge sheet filed by NIA in dargah blast case before the special judge named Aseemanand, Sandeep Dangae, Bhawesh Bhai, Mehul, Suresh Bhai, Ramchander and Sunil Joshi, now dead, and Bharat Bhai as the main accused in dargah blast case.
The charge sheet alleged they were “Hindu extremists” who had carried out the “terrorist activity”, court sources said.They have been charged with IPC sections related to murder, conspiracy to murder and terrorist activities, they said. PTI
