Bogus Blame

In a damning indictment of the then Congress-led UPA’s counter-terrorism apparatus and its cynical politicisation of investigative agencies, a special NIA court has acquitted all seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, including Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. The verdict was unequivocal: there was no evidence, let alone evidence “beyond reasonable doubt.”

The Malegaon case was not just a botched probe but a cynical campaign to frame an entire ideological movement, and by extension, a religious community as India’s new internal enemy. Its lethal, politically motivated fiction, hatched and peddled by the highest echelons of the Congress at the Centre and the then NCP-Congress government in Maharashtra, was instrumental in promoting the bogey of ‘saffron’ or ‘Hindu terror’ across the world.

This linguistic sleight-of-hand of replacing ‘Jihadi terror’ with ‘Hindu terror’ aimed to manufacture moral parity in a cynical bid to appease one section of the electorate by demonising another. In doing so, the case has eroded trust in national institutions, emboldened actual terrorists and sowed communal discord. Even the integrity of the Army was not spared.

The ATS had claimed the blast was orchestrated by Abhinav Bharat, a little-known group allegedly led by Thakur and Purohit. The motorcycle used in the blast was supposedly traced to Thakur, though its identification was tampered with. Purohit, a top Army intelligence officer with a record of infiltrating anti-national networks, was accused of supplying explosives.

Purohit’s persecution went far beyond the courtroom. While in custody, he was subjected to inhuman torture whence he was repeatedly beaten in the goriest manner possible while his family were traumatized. Similar was the case with Pragya Singh Thakur.

The officer who had risked his life infiltrating terror networks was now being vilified by the very system he had served. Yet, despite the barbarity inflicted on him, Purohit bore it with stoic dignity.

But it is the political choreography that is most damning. Congress leaders like Digvijaya Singh turned court proceedings into talking points. From branding the RSS a “bomb-making factory” to blaming Hindutva groups for attacks ranging from Malegaon to Samjhauta Express, Singh was the public face of a campaign that had deeper roots within the government. In 2010, Home Minister P. Chidambaram infamously warned of a “saffron terror” threat. In 2013, Sushilkumar Shinde, then Home Minister, alleged that BJP and RSS were running “terror training camps.”

The recent judgment lays bare the institutional rot. The ATS failed to follow basic protocols and no link could be proven between the accused and any explosives. The NIA, after inheriting the case in 2011, eventually dropped charges under MCOCA and admitted the ATS’s investigation was riddled with serious lacunae.

What the Congress really ended up doing was corrupt the very machinery of justice. Justice delayed is tragic. But justice perverted is unforgivable. The Congress owes an apology, not just to the falsely accused but to the country it sought to divide by creating ghosts it could never exorcise.