Caravan challenges Aseemanand, releases interview transcripts

mangaloretoday.com/ CNN-IBN

New Delhi, Feb 09: A day after CNN-IBN accessed a hand-written note by terror accused Swami Aseemanand where he denied having given an interview to The Caravan, the magazine has now countered the jailed activist’s claims and released the interview’s transcripts.

The Caravan magazine on Sunday released transcript of the Aseemanand interview which shows him claiming that the terror attacks were carried out at the behest of the RSS.

 

The transcripts suggest that Aseemanand did indeed mention RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and another top leader Indresh Kumar while speaking to the reporter.

The transcripts also claims Aseemanand openly narrated his story. However, the interview transcripts do not indicate whether Aseemanand was aware that he was talking to a journalist. Assemanand had earlier alleged that the reporter posed as a lawyer when she came to meet him.

The Caravan’s cover story has sent shock waves across the Sangh Parivar and its political wing, the BJP.

The report makes some startling revelations, quoting Aseemanand as saying that the RSS top brass including its current chief Mohan Bhagwat and another top leader Indresh Kumar, had sanctioned three bomb blasts in 2007.

Aseemanand was arrested in 2010 on charges of abetting terrorism. He is the main accused in the Samjhauta Express (February 2007), Hyderabad Mecca Masjid (May 2007), Ajmer Dargah (October 2007) blasts and two attacks in Malegaon (September 2006 and September 2008) - which together killed 119 people.

The article said, "Aseemanand told me (reporter) about a meeting that allegedly took place, in July 2005. After an RSS conclave in Surat, senior Sangh leaders including Bhagwat and Indresh Kumar, who is now on the organisation’s powerful seven-member national executive council, travelled to a temple in the Dangs, Gujarat, where Aseemanand was living - a two-hour drive. In a tent pitched by a river several kilometres away from the temple, Bhagwat and Kumar met with Aseemanand and his accomplice Sunil Joshi. Joshi informed Bhagwat of a plan to bomb several Muslim targets around India. According to Aseemanand, both the RSS leaders approved of it, and Bhagwat told him, ’You can work on this with Sunil. We will not be involved, but if you are doing this, you can consider us to be with you’."

Aseemanand’s lawyers and the RSS were quick to rubbish the report. His lawyers said that the interview never took place.