The Nexus Behind the Fall of Lt. Col. Purohit, Patriot Turned Pariah

A multi-part investigation into how the 2008 Malegaon blasts was turned into a political weapon, a narrative war and a cover for deeper conspiracies involving India’s most wanted fugitive and the Maoist underground.

THE MALEGAON FILES - PART 2

Amid a swirl of gangsters, arms traffickers and Islamic radicals, Military Intelligence officer Prasad Purohit became the patsy for Malegaon.

In the maze of India’s murky criminal underworld and shadowy intelligence dealings, few names cast as long and sinister a shadow as Sohrabuddin Sheikh. Once little more than a foot soldier in the vast transnational empire of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim, Sohrabuddin rose to become one of his most prolific arms suppliers. His death in a controversial police encounter in 2005 in Gujarat was neither the beginning nor the end of his tale. That story, like much else in India’s struggle with terrorism, would ultimately find its fulcrum in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast.

Investigative findings into the Malegaon attack, which tore through a predominantly Muslim town in Maharashtra’s Nashik district, debunk the narrative of ‘Hindu extremism’ long peddled by India’s law enforcement agencies.

At worst, it was a calculated political project, designed to shift attention from the real culprits: a nexus of Dawood Ibrahim, the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, radical Islamist preacher Zakir Naik, and their alleged political allies within India’s Congress party.

Sohrabuddin’s story offers a revealing glimpse into how the larger machinery operated. A native of Jhirnya village near Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, he was no ordinary thug. By the mid-1990s, authorities had registered over 60 criminal cases against him, spanning Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. In 1995, police recovered 32 AK-47 assault rifles from a well on his property. These arms are believed to have been supplied by Dawood and ISI operatives in the wake of the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Dawood, already operating in concert with the ISI, began marshalling operatives to foment unrest within India.

At first, Dawood relied on hardened political mafiosi: Bihar’s Mohammad Shahabuddin, Uttar Pradesh’s Mukhtar Ansari, and the now-deceased Atiq Ahmed. These men, each with a sprawling criminal empire, facilitated arms delivery within India. Shahabuddin, then an RJD MP, even met Dawood in Mecca in 2001. ISI-supplied weapons arrived from Pakistan and other destinations via drones or covert routes and were dispatched to militants operating in Jammu & Kashmir. Uttar Pradesh police, after Atiq Ahmed’s assassination, revealed that Ahmed had been receiving arms consignments from the ISI, following a handover of duties from his former associate, Mukhtar Ansari.

Sohrabuddin became a key intermediary. After gaining Dawood’s trust, he was tasked with supplying weapons to the armed cadres of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He worked with several underworld notables, including Sharif Khan (alias Chhota Dawood), Abdul Latif, Rasool Parti and Brajesh Singh. As pressure mounted from security agencies, Sohrabuddin relocated to Hyderabad. He was eventually killed in a police encounter on 26 November 2005, as he travelled from Hyderabad to Gujarat - a killing widely seen in so-called liberal circles as ‘extrajudicial’ and ‘politically motivated.’

The roots of the Malegaon blast go deeper. Dawood Ibrahim, now designated a global terrorist by both the United Nations and India, operated with considerable impunity. He channelled money through shell companies like Jupiter Finance, New Star Investment and Wahab Resources into oil and coal ventures in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. These fronts, some of which were previously used by Maoist groups for laundering, generated profits that funded a sprawling arms smuggling enterprise. Weapons manufactured in Pakistan, China, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and parts of the Middle East were supplied to Maoist leaders like Ganpati and Seema Irani. These arms also flowed to Khalistani groups such as the Khalistan Liberation Force and International Sikh Youth Federation - all united in their aim to destabilize India.

India’s so-called Red Terror has long-standing international antecedents. In 1995, Danish national Niels Holck dropped four tonnes of rocket launchers, assault rifles, and missiles over Purulia, West Bengal, from a cargo plane. These weapons, allegedly meant for Maoist insurgents, were intended to help them take on the Indian Army. But the insurgents’ war was not just with the state; it had a sectarian dimension. The murder of BJP legislator Krishnanand Rai in 2005 demonstrated how political violence blended with religious vengeance. Shooter Munna Bajrangi reportedly severed Rai’s shikha (a traditional Hindu braid) with a knife after killing him and relayed the act as a ‘gift’ to Mukhtar Ansari, then lodged in jail.

Against this backdrop, the Malegaon bomb blast appears less a religiously-motivated act of “saffron terror” (as Congress leaders have peddled) than a coordinated attempt by Islamist groups and their political enablers to frame Hindutva organisations.

According to sources privy to the investigation, Dawood had secretly travelled to Malegaon in 2005, despite the massive bounty on his head - $25 million from the UN, and Rs. 25 lakh from India’s National Investigation Agency. The visit was said to be for planning an operation that would implicate Hindutva leaders in a terror plot. Zakir Naik, whose Islamic Research Foundation had grown influential among Muslim youth, reportedly played an ideological role in legitimising such radical designs.

But how did Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit, a dedicated serving officer in Military Intelligence find himself at the centre of this alleged conspiracy?

The answer lies in a murky bureaucratic episode involving his superior officer, Colonel R.K. Srivastava. Then Director of MI-9, Colonel Srivastava was posted at Army Headquarters when he turned up one day at the Army Education Corps Training College in Panchmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, where Purohit was studying Arabic. He claimed he had orders from Delhi to escort Purohit to the military headquarters for questioning related to the Malegaon case.

Lt Colonel G.C. Mohanta, the college’s commanding officer, received a written movement order to this effect. It stated that Purohit was to report to Director MI-20 at Military HQ in Delhi. But instead of following the official route, Srivastava took Purohit in a taxi to Bhopal airport and then on to Mumbai, confiscating his phone and threatening him when he questioned the deviation from protocol. In Mumbai, officers from Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad and Intelligence Bureau officer Sanjay Garg seized him outside the airport and bundled him into a white Tata Sumo.

Only later did it emerge that the movement order had been forged. It had neither the proper authorisation nor the correct chain of custody. Purohit had been abducted under a false pretext by his own colleague and handed over to civilian agencies, violating due process and internal military regulations.

This breach of procedure and ethics was not an isolated incident. It reflected a broader strategy to build a case of ‘Hindutva terror’ at a time when Islamist radicalism and cross-border militancy were escalating. The political implications were clear: to equate radical Hindutva groups with global jihadist networks, and thereby neutralise the BJP's narrative of national security.

With the court’s verdict acquitting Purohit and the others, the credibility of the Malegaon investigation has all but crumbled. Witnesses have retracted. Charges have been questioned. Courts have expressed concern about procedural lapses. And yet, the reputational damage to officers like Purohit, and the wider ideological targeting of Hindutva groups, has endured.

The deeper irony is that while shadowy figures like Dawood Ibrahim continue to elude justice, and while radical outfits persist under new names and strategies, the Indian state remains vulnerable to being manipulated not just by foreign actors, but by its own institutions, in pursuit of political convenience.

(The writer, who goes by his nom de plume of Akela, is a senior investigative journalist based in Mumbai)