Arrest of Three Hindutva Terrorists in Maharashtra now Forgotten?

It’s more than a week since the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested three Sanatan Sanstha members, ardent Hindutva fanatics, and also recovered huge cache of explosives from the trio. These men, Vaibhav Raut (40), Sharad Kalaskar (25) and Sudhanwa Gondhalekar (39) were arrested following raids in Palghar district and Pune, and they were remanded to ATS custody until 18 August. The ATS has booked them under the draconian UAPA.

Since their arrest and the recovery of explosive items from their custody, their possible role in the murders of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare is investigated by the ATS. It’s possible that these three accused may lead to the arrest of MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh’s murderers, both of whom were killed in Karnataka.

Though initially the news of these arrests found place in the national media, however, showing their servile loyalty to the ruling Hindutva fascist camp led by the RSS, to which Sanatan Sanstha and numerous such Hindutva terror organisations swear allegiance to, the story was later killed by the mainstream media houses to divert the people’s attention from the menace of Hindutva terrorism. The term “Hindutva terrorism” is cleverly omitted and the accused are presented simply as stray Sanatan Sanstha supporters, activists, etc. No mention is made of any possible links between these Hindutva-incensed organisations and the foreign powers that fund and arm them. The mainstream media remained indifferent to the case so far and didn’t show even an iota of interest in this case as they would do in case a Muslim man gets arrested on terror charges.

“We recovered around 20 crude bombs, two gelatin sticks, four electronic detonators, two bottles of poison, several materials required to make bombs, literature and SIM cards from Raut’s house and shop, which is located nearby. We have sent everything to the Forensic Laboratory in Kalina for tests, though we don’t think the explosives were RDX. We are questioning the three to find out what was the motive behind stocking up the explosives and whether they were planning to carry out any attack,” an ATS officer was quoted by the Mumbai Mirror. Even after recovering such a huge cache of explosive, when the police are not sure that what could be the “motive” of stocking these items apart from using them in any terror plot, then it becomes clear that the law enforcement agencies are under compulsion to not go much further.

These arrests and the aforesaid recovery of explosives point towards a greater conspiracy than the murder of the rationalist Dabholkar and CPI leader Pansare. With that amount of explosives and detonators recovered, any large-scale bomb blast and terror attack could have been executed by the accused. This exactly happened in Malegaon bomb blast, Mecca Masjid bomb blast, Samjhauta Express bomb blast and other such cases of Hindutva terror strikes. It’s a dangerous sign, as the recovery means there are larger plans to create a turmoil in the country before the 2019 general election and use such incidents of terrorism to polarise the voters.

It’s quite easy for the Hindutva fascist RSS to design terrorist schemes under the guidance of the US secret service agency CIA, the Zionist Mossad and other foreign espionage agencies. They can execute such terrorist activity by employing the services of millions of Hindutva-incensed bigot and fanatic cadres of different organisations that operate under Nagpur.

Any such act of terrorism, especially those that target the Hindu religious institutes or devotees, can give immense political benefit to the Modi government and the BJP during a crucial election year. The BJP gains politically as it’s easy to blame the Muslims for such terrorist incidents by using the corporate-controlled mainstream media to propagate sheer lies and spread xenophobia. Innocent Muslims suffer due to the criminal conspiracy hatched by the RSS and its Hindutva bandwagon, which follow the commands of its foreign masters.

The mainstream media’s conspicuous silence over these arrests after breaking the news, confirms its allegiance to the regime and its Hindutva fascist ideology. The contractors of “nationalism” and “patriotism”, the highly-paid tv anchors and demagogues of the ruling camp, remained mute on the issue and diverted the people’s attention by highlighting Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech and later, by eulogising Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Beating around the bush on many non-important topics, the media totally blackened the news of this crucial arrest of three terrorists associated with an organisation that officially supports the Narendra Modi regime. It seems like this case will be thrown to the backburner to erase the concept of “Hindutva terrorism” once more from public memory, as the media has already erased the case of 2008 Hindutva terror network busting by the Maharashtra ATS or the recent arrest of a large number of BJP and Bajrang Dal members in Madhya Pradesh for allegedly spying on behalf of the Pakistani secret service agency ISI.

Hindutva terrorism has always remained a favourite weapon of the Indian ruling classes, the big comprador capitalists, feudal landlords and foreign corporate houses since the 1980s to vilify the Muslim community, turn them into “others” in the Indian society and then subject them to persecution by spreading Islamophobia among the dominant upper-caste Hindu elites and middle-class. With this Hindutva terrorism, the Indian rulers have instigated numerous communal pogroms, riots and carnages throughout the country and on each occasion, due to the strong patronage they received from the RSS and the BJP, these Hindutva terrorists remained aloof from law and law enforcing agencies.

The police and the establishment always appeased the Hindutva fascists and terrorists, and they were made inalienable part of India’s so-called “War on Terror”. Whenever they have been arrested or the law enforcement officers cracked a whip on them, there was vehement opposition against such actions from the ruling classes themselves. In a country with a system that’s biased against the Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Adivasis, it’s impossible that the Hindutva terrorism and its perpetrators will be ever be booked, prosecuted and punished by the law to end the menace that’s ruling India with impunity and burning down the secular fabric of the nation with the flames of communal hatred.

Earlier in 2008, when the Abhinav Bharat terror module was unearthed and hardcore Hindutva terrorists like Sadhvi Pragya, Colonel Shrikant Prasad Purohit and Swami Aseemanand, etc. were arrested for their notorious role in executing a series of bomb blasts targeting the Muslim community, the Maharashtra ATS and its then chief, Hemant Karkare, had to face a volley of fire from the then opposition BJP, which, along with the RSS, vehemently opposed the state’s crackdown on Hindutva terrorists and called it an attack on the Hindu community by blurring the line that demarcates peaceful Hindus from violent Hindutva terrorists.

This strategy of playing the Hindu card to protect the Hindutva terror mongers is quite similar to the strategy that the Hindutva fascists followed in the Kathua gangrape and murder case of an eight-year-old Bakharwal Muslim girl, where they rallied in support of the accused and demanded their immediate release from police custody by mixing communal colour to the police crackdown.

During the investigation of the Abhinav Bharat case, Hemant Karkare was mysteriously found dead while fighting terrorists during the 28 November 2008 terror attack on Mumbai. His death remains a mystery unsolved until today. There are allegations of the invisible hand of the RSS behind the murder of the upright police officer who did his job with unprecedented valour and honesty.

The death of Hemant Karkare and the subsequent reshuffling of the ATS team, halted the progress of the investigation into the presence of a large terrorist network operated by the Hindutva fascist RSS through numerous organisations, officially or unofficially affiliated with it. The Congress-led UPA II government didn’t try to take the case to its conclusion due to the fear of losing upper-caste elite Hindu votes. Bureaucrats like RK Singh, who was Home Secretary during the revelation of the Hindutva terrorist network, later joined the BJP and quashed the investigation. He is now a cabinet minister of Narendra Modi’s establishment and thumps his chest in support of the very murderous political force against whom he was taking strong steps in 2008.

Soon after coming to power, Narendra Modi’s regime diluted cases against all Hindutva terrorists and forced the NIA to ensure their release from jail. Despite the explosive exposure by Public Prosecutor Rohini Sailan that the NIA has directly asked her to go soft on the Malegaon blast case, in which the Hindutva terrorists were tried, there were no actions taken to prevent the collapse of the case for which Hemant Karkare sacrificed his life. Under the patronage of the Modi regime, dangerous terrorists like Aseemanand, Sadhvi Pragya and Colonel Purohit were released from jail and they were deputed by the RSS in different other missions. The press and the state ensured that Hindutva terrorism is never given the spotlight and no one calls the RSS – a terrorist organisation that it is.

In the serial murder cases of Dabholkar, Pansare, Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh, a common pattern was found; the assassins will come in motorcycle, shoot from 9mm pistol and kill their target with precision. The victims brought the ire of the Hindutva fascist camp by their critical analysis of religion, caste system, history distortion and by criticising the Modi regime for its anti-people, anti-minority and anti-national standpoint. The killers were never nabbed, though, after the death of each victim, the saffron camp was found in a jubilation mood.

There was a flood of online slurs and abuses targeting MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh after they were killed; not only the RSS leaders and cyber activists, even BJP lawmakers joined the party to celebrate the murder. No police cases were made against them and they didn’t face any action for their crime. The killings were justified by citing the critical views that the victims held and the RSS men even threatened many more critical thinkers and vocal critics of the government with such dire consequences. The mainstream press brushed them aside by calling them fringe, trolls, etc., in an attempt to show them differently from the RSS and the BJP.

The common pattern displayed in the series of these murders of critical thinkers and writers confirm that professional killers were part of the killings, as there have been zero errors and absolute precision was displayed in each case. A similar precision was recently shown in the killing of the former editor of Rising Kashmir, Syed Shujaat Bukhari. Such precision not only points toward the involvement of hired killers but killers who are trained to kill and flee with military precision, something that no novice terrorist organisation can impart unless there’s involvement of people from a military background in their organisation. Colonel Purohit is merely a small pin in the gigantic Hindutva terror machine where Hindutva fascists and Brahmanical military men blend to form a vicious force.

Even now, when the trio, Vaibhav Raut, Sharad Kalaskar and Sudhanwa Gondhalekar are arrested, and a huge cache of explosives was recovered from them, the Maharashtra ATS and the police, who would go any distance to falsely accuse and arrest left-wing activists as Maoist militants, isolated these three from the larger Hindutva network, despite the fact that Vaibhav Raut is a leading member of the cow vigilante terror group (Gau Rakshaks) – Hindu Govansh Raksha Samiti, which has direct links with the Bajrang Dal and the RSS. The ATS is claiming that it will investigate the involvement of these three in terrorist activities but they are not trying to probe the role of their organisation, the Sanatan Sanstha, which is connected with the RSS through many visible and invisible threads. As any probing into the organisation’s role will open the pandora’s box that the ruling classes want to keep hidden.

It’s evident that the state and the Hindutva-inclined mainstream media will not expose the nefarious schemes of the Hindutva fascist camp led by the RSS. They will never let the people know about the terrorist cells that the RSS and the VHP have built with the help of the CIA, Mossad and the R&AW to promote communal antagonism, riots and pogroms in the country and allow the big foreign banks, foreign mining corporations and crony corporate houses to plunder India’s resources behind the scene. The state and the media can make these three men scapegoats and accuse them of spreading terror in an isolated, lone-wolf way, which will provide a safety coverage to the organisations that have so far controlled these men and their accomplices. The source of Hindutva terrorism will remain untouched, uncovered and unmentioned, and it will keep breeding hatred, malice and violence unless the people’s struggle for democracy, secularism and a socialist country demolish the very structure of Hindutva fascism and overthrow its appendages like the corporate media houses and toady propagandists.