KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
The attack on Jammu mosque in 2004 attributed to militants was actually carried out by ‘Hindutva forces’, an investigation carried by noted Kashmiri journalist, Muzamil Jaleel said.
The grenade attack on a Friday prayer gathering at the Ahle Hadees mosque in Peer Mitha on January 9, 2004, had left two J&K officials dead and 19 injured. The Jammu police had initially blamed a small militant outfit, Tehreek-ul Mujahideen, and arrested 108 people. In 2005, the case was closed as “untraced”.
“An investigation into the theft of a police file on a 2004 grenade attack on a mosque in Jammu has gone cold,” the report written by Jaleel for The Indian Express said. “In this case too, the NIA had blamed Hindu extremists, including two held in the Malegaon blasts case and currently in judicial custody.”
Seven years later, said the report, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had said Rajendra Chaudhary and Dhan Singh, arrested in connection with the 2007 Samjhauta Express attack and the 2008 Malegaon blasts, were behind the attack. In December 2012, an NIA team had questioned two youths from Kanachak in Jammu.
“In the light of the NIA disclosures,” Jaleel wrote, “a re-investigation was ordered, but it never took off because the J&K Police said that the original case file had been “stolen”. Last month, special public prosecutor Rohini Salian had told The Indian Express that she was asked to “go soft” in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case by an NIA officer after the change of government at the Centre.”
Quoting a senior JK police officer, the report said: “The NIA asked for the evidence that we had collected from the spot immediately after the mosque grenade blasts.” He said he issued orders for a re-investigation, only to be told that the case file had been stolen from the police station. “A deputy superintendent of police was asked to investigate the theft.”
No progress has been made since. “It’s in cold storage,” the officer said.
PDP leader and J&K Revenue Minister Javaid Mustafa Mir, who was minister of state for power in 2004, was present in the mosque at the time of the attack. He said he knew who had hurled the grenades.
As per the NIA, in a “disclosure statement”, Rajendra Chaudhary had said that in 2001 he had met Sunil Joshi, then a pracharak in Mhow, at Depalpur in Indore district of Madhya Pradesh. “Sunil Joshi… asked me to do something for Hindus and the country. I readily agreed to lay down my life for the Hindu cause. He said Hindus are facing atrocities in Kashmir due to Muslim terrorism… we both came to Jammu by train. We visited Vaishno Devi temple and thereafter Sunilji took me to a room near Purkhu village, Jammu. It was a big ground with a room where two persons, namely Chanderkant Patil and Dhan Singh of Hatod, were already staying,” Chaudhary allegedly told the NIA.
The NIA claimed that, in his statement, Dhan Singh said: “Along with Patil, I went to the Masjid. After removing pins from the hand grenades, both of us threw hand grenades on the namazis… After that incident, I along with Rajendra came back to Indore and Patil stayed back.’’
