India: Cops arrest VHP leader Jagdish Anant for involvement in May 30 serial blasts in Mathura

Mail Today | Lucknow, June 28, 2013

Piyush Srivastava

The police have arrested a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader for last month's serial blasts in Kosikalan area of Mathura. The investigators have concluded that Jagdish Anant, city president of the VHP, was not only involved in the blasts but also in assembling the bombs.

Four bombs had exploded in the minority dominated area on May 30. Although there was no casualty in the blasts, the Local Intelligence Unit (LIU) has stated that it was meant for terrorizing the people.

"There was CCTV footage to prove that he was at the blast sites soon before explosions. He terrorized the local residents and tried to disturb social harmony by his actions", said SSP of Mathura Rajesh Kumar Singh Rathore.

The arrest of the VHP leader has also substantiated the allegation of the Muslim clerics of the area that they were behind last year's riots in Kosikalan in which four people were brutally killed.

Maulana Tahir Singarvi, head of Darul Uloom Madrassa in Kosikalan, one time close confident of ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) president Mulayam Singh Yadav, has alleged that the lynching of four persons during a riot in the town on June 1, 2012 was pre-planned by the right-wing organisation.

"Despite our repeated reminder with certain proofs that the VHP leaders were behind the riots in past and planning to instigate more communal violence, the SP government is sitting idle as if waiting for mass murder of the members of minority community. It is in the agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) to push Mathura in communal violence before Parliamentary elections and polarize majority votes in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)," alleged Singarvi.

"A report prepared by social workers under the guidance of well-known legal luminary Rajinder Sachar has squarely blamed Bhagat Prasad Ruhela, BJP's chairman of Kosikalan Nagar Palika Parishad for last year's riot. Debo Pansari, an aide of Ruhela washed his hand in a contained in which water was kept for those who had turned up for Friday prayer in a masjid. But when Khalid, a local youth objected, a large number of rioters led by Ruhela attacked the Muslims," he further alleged.

The report had quoted Farzana (46), whose two son-in-laws Bhura and Kallu has been lynched and then burnt and Mohammad Idrees, whose nephew Salauddin was killed. Sonu, a Hindu boy had also died in the riot.

But former BJP MP Tejveer Singh said it was a conspiracy of the SP government to malign the RSS and the VHP.

"Jagdish Anant has been arrested on the direction of the SP leaders because he has support of 36 Block Development Committee (BDC) members whereas the SP and the RLD together have only 35 members of their side. He is a victim of block level politics. But we will not sit idle. We have already started sit-in stirs in the city for his release", Singh said.


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