Blast cases against me politically motivated, claims Aseemanand

Rajinder Nagarkoti

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, April 21

“It is the victory of truth and now truth has come before everybody. The cases against me were politically motivated,” said Swami Assemanand, who was in Panchkula in connection with the hearing in the Samjhauta Express blasts case on Saturday.

He was talking to mediapersons for the first time after the Special National Investigation Agency (NIA) Court in Hyderabad acquitted him in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case on April 16. He is on bail in the Samjhauta Express blasts case. He was also acquitted in the Ajmer Dargah blasts case in March last year.

Aseemanand, who was clad in saffron clothes, said that the blast cases against him were politically motivated and he has full faith in the Indian judicial system. His counsel Manvir Rathi said that Aseemanand was a victim of “political terrorism”.

Meanwhile, during the hearing in the Special NIA Court in Panchkula, the statements of two judicial officers, who had recorded the statements of two prosecution witnesses, were recorded. These judicial officers had recorded the statements of the witnesses at Panchkula and Gurugram.

Rathi said that the court has now fixed May 4 as the next date of hearing. Till date, 213 witnesses had been examined, he added.

Recently, the Special Court of the NIA at Panchkula, had issued summons to 13 Pakistan nationals in the case for August 3 and 4. They were either travelling on the train or were next of kin of those who died in the blasts. Some of them had received the bodies of their relatives.

The NIA on June 20, 2011, had filed the charge sheet against Swami Aseemanand and four others in the Panchkula NIA court. The agency had accused Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Sunil Joshi (now dead), Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalasangra, aka Ramji, of hatching a criminal conspiracy of blasts in the cross-border train near the Dewana railway station in Panipat district in February 2007, resulting in the death of 68 persons. A majority of those killed in the blasts were Pakistanis.