RSS leader Swami Aseemanand and six others were on Wednesday acquitted in the 2007 Ajmer blast case by a National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Jaipur. The court convicted three others for the blast.
Judge Dinesh Gupta pronounced Devendra Gupta, Bhavesh Patel and Sunil Joshi guilty under various sections of the IPC, the Explosive Substances Act, and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for the bomb attack, which had left three pilgrims dead and 15 others injured. Sunil Joshi was murdered in December 2007.
The quantum of sentence will be announced on March 16, defence counsel Jagdish Rana said.
The NIA court gave Aseemanand and six others — Harshad Solanki, lokesh Sharma, Mehul Kumar, Mukesh Vasani, Bharat Bhai and Chandrashekar — clean chit for “benefit of doubt”. Chandrashekhar is out on bail, while others are in judicial custody.
“The conviction was made under section 120 (B)(Criminal conspiracy), 295-A (Deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the IPC, the Explosive Substances Act, and the Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act,” Rana said.
Aseemanand is an accused in the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast in which 68 people were killed in two coaches of Samjhauta Express train near Dewana railway station in Panipat on February 18, 2007.
A member of right-wing Abhinav Bharat, Assemanand has been in jail since December 2010. He was also named as an accused in the Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blast case.
On December 26, 2010, he was arrested by CBI from Haridwar for his alleged role in the Mecca Masjid blast in which 14 persons were killed. According to the NIA probing the Ajmer blast case, three accused — Sandeep Dange, Ramchandra and Suresh Nair — are absconding.
The case was handed over to ATS Rajasthan and later transferred to NIA, which re-registered the case with the NIA police station in New Delhi on April 6, 2011. There were as many as 149 witnesses in the case and 451 documents were examined. NIA had filed three supplementary chargesheet in the case. The blast on October 11, 2007 in the dargah of Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti at Ajmer at the time of Roza Iftaar, had left three pilgrims and 15 others injured.