Malegaon bomb blast: Swami Amritanand remanded to PC till Nov 26

Nashik, Nov 14 (UNI) A local court today remanded Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Swami Amritanand alias Dyanand Pande, arrested in connection with the September 29 Malegaon bomb blast, to police custody till November 26.

The District and Sessions Court Judge H K Ganatra (4th Joint Civil Judge Senior Division) remanded Dwivedi to 12 days police custody.

The court also ordered to conduct scientific tests, including narco, brain-mapping and polygraphy, on him.

Seeking the custody, prosecution told the court that Dwivedi, who played a key role in the Malegaon bomb blast conspiracy, has been accused of attending various meetings with Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit. Among them was a meeting held at Pune before the blast, at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh on April 12, at Faridabad ashram on January 26.

He also directed Lt Col Purohit to arrange for the explosives, especially RDX, for the blast.

All this was revealed during the interrogation of Pragya and Lt Col Purohit, prosecution said.

Prosecution said accused number six Ajay Rahirkar, treasurer of Abhinav Bharat, transferred huge amount of money to Dwivedi's account. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate how much amount of money was transferred by Rahirkar to Dwivedi and for what purpose, whether it was used for arranging explosives, what role Dwivedi played in the meetings and whether he was involved in any other blasts. Also, two accused -- Ramji, who had parked the motorcycle at the bomb blast site, and one Sameer Dange -- are still absconding.

Prosecution told the court that to trace their whearabouts, Dwivedi's custody was necessary.

Also, according to panchanama made by Lucknow ATS, they had seized some boarding passes of Kingfisher Airlines, diaries, laptops, pendrives, mobile phones, cheque book and ATM cards from Dwivedi.

When the court asked the accused about any complaints of physical harassment by the ATS officials, he said he was physically tortured by the ATS officials since his arrest yesterday. Following this, the court examined him in camera. However, the court did not find any visible marks on his body.

The court also asked the accused for his consent for the scientific tests. The accused gave his consent orally, but his lawyer objected to it. The court then asked for a written consent of the accused, which he provided.

Dwivedi, a high-profile person, was intercepted by Mumbai ATS at Kanpur on November 12 with the help of Uttar Pradesh ATS. The Mumbai ATS had sought permission from the Nashik court on November 10 for his investigation. He was produced before the Metropolitan Court in Lucknow on November 13, which gave him the transit remand. He was brought to Mumbai last night and was formally arrested at 0445 hrs.

Later, he underwent medical examination at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai before being produced in the Nashik court today.

The court provided him the government legal aid Adv B D More.

Meanwhile, the court gave the custody of accused number seven Rakesh Dhawade to Jalna Police.

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