A special court in Jaipur acquitted on Wednesday former Rashtriya Sawamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak Swami Aseemanand in the 2007 Ajmer Dargah bomb blast case.
The court found three – Sunil Joshi (dead), Devendra Gupta, Bhavesh Patel – guilty and they have been convicted the case.
Patel and Gupta fined Rs 1 lakh each, the quantum of punishment will be pronounced by the court on March 16.
Magistrate Dinesh Gupta, had in February this year, adjourned the hearing as the court needed more time to study all documents submitted by the prosecution and the defence.
The case was handed over to ATS Rajasthan and was later transferred to NIA which re-registered the case with the NIA police station in New Delhi on April 6, 2011.
On October 11, 2007, during the month of Ramzan, a blast rocked the dargah of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, killing three and injuring 17 people. There were as many as 149 witnesses in the case and 451 documents were examined and the NIA filed three supplementary chargesheets in the case.
A report in The Caravan magazine in February 2014 quoted Aseemanand as saying that Bhagwat, then RSS general secretary, told him that the blasts should not be linked to the Sangh.
“Aseemanand told The Caravan that Bhagwat said of the violence, ‘It is very important that it be done. But you should not link it to the Sangh’,” said a press release issued by the magazine on Wednesday.
The RSS, however, denied the charge and questioned the veracity of the interview with Aseemanand, who is currently in Ambala Central Jail.
“It is a rubbish and concocted interview,” said the RSS’s all-India publicity chief Manmohan Vaidya.
