With a witness in the 2008 Malegaon blast case claiming that he was ‘tortured’ and ‘forced’ by Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) to ‘falsely frame Yogi Adityanath’, RSS leader Indresh Kumar has demanded an apology from former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Kumar said that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) conspired against ‘saffron’ to link it with terrorism.

“Congress-led UPA (during 2008 Malegaon blast) conspired against ‘bhagwa‘ (saffron)…linked it with terrorism. They attempted to misuse (probe) agency officers to arrest people so as to defame religious leaders, but failed miserably,” Indresh Kumar said in a radio message.

Kumar’s statement came after a witness in the 2008 Malegaon blast case deposed before a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court and said that he was forced to take names of Yogi Adityanath and four other RSS leaders including Indresh Kumar.

The statement seems far from truth, political: AIMIM

The revelation triggered a political storm and parties such as the AIMIM claimed that the new statement seems political and ‘far from truth’. “Now with upcoming elections in five states, bringing a witness after 13-14 years to claim that they were forced to falsely name Yogi Adityanath and other RSS members seems like politics and far from the truth,” said AMIM MLA Mufti

So far, more than 13 witnesses have turned hostile in the 2008 Malegaon blast case and retracted the statements they made before the probe agencies, namely, the ATS and NIA. Six people were killed and over 100 were injured when an improvised explosive device on a motorcycle went off at a mosque in Maharashtra’s Malegaon in September 2008.