[Reader-list] Sunil Joshi, the willing fundamentalist

[Subhash]

The willing fundamentalist

A murder suspect and rabid zealot, RSS man Sunil Joshi could easily
have been checked earlier by the police

Joshi and Dange had tried to bomb temples in Mhow several times to
implicate local Muslims

SUNIL JOSHI, the man at the centre of the Hindutva terror conspiracy,
was 45 when he was mysteriously murdered outside his home in Dewas,
Madhya Pradesh in 2007. By then, he had already left a rabidly violent
footprint. Shockingly, much of this could have been prevented if the
Madhya Pradesh police had acted in time and done its job well.

Joshi came from a very poor family and was educated at a RSS-run
Saraswati Shishu Mandir. In 1999, he became RSS Zilla Pracharak of
Mhow district, where he earned a reputation for being an acrid
fundamentalist. In RSS circles, he was called Guruji.

In 2000, Joshi and two other RSS activists Sandeep Dange and
Ramchandra Kalsangra became close friends. Dange was the RSS Zilla
Pracharak in Shajapur district; Kalsangra was a RSS pra charak from
Indore. The association would prove to be deadly.

While Swami Aseemanand’s confession places Joshi at the centre of a
series of major terror blasts from 2006 onwards, it seems Joshi’s
criminal ambitions far predated that. In a depraved move, Dange and he
had already made several crude attempts to bomb temples in Mhow to
implicate local Muslims and trigger Hindu-Muslim riots.

This emerged in September last year, when the CBI tracked down Rajesh
Mishra, another RSS activist from Mhow and a close friend of Joshi’s,
who had unwittingly provided him bomb-making material during his early
days as a terrorist.

Mishra ran a foundry in Pithampura near Mhow. In 2001, Joshi
apparently requested him to manufacture 15 customised pipes with
grooves on the inside and a hole in the centre for some important RSS
work. In April 2002, Joshi and Dange exploded two low-intensity bombs
close to the Kade Hanuman Mandir and the Swarg Mandir in Mhow. One
person suffered minor injuries; no one died. In December 2002, over
half a dozen live pipe bombs were recovered from an ijtema, a large
religious gathering of Muslims, held near the Bhopal Railway Station.
Mishra paled when he saw pictures of the bombs on TV because they
looked exactly like what he had provided Joshi. He called Joshi but in
a panic but was told not to worry.

In August 2003, after a quarrel with Pyare Singh Ninama, a Congress
tribal leader, Joshi and Dange murdered Ninama and his son Dinesh. The
family named Joshi, Rajesh Mishra and seven others as suspects in
their FIR. Mishra was arrested, but though Joshi had left a trail of
evidences behind him, the police failed to apprehend him. However, he
was formally expelled by the RSS.

When Mishra was arrested, he told the police that Joshi was behind the
blasts at the two temples, as well as the attempted strike at the
Muslim gathering. The police booked Mishra for the temple blasts, but
did not name Joshi in the cases. He was allowed a free run from the
law. This enabled Joshi to carry out the later terror strikes that
would kill dozens of men, women and children.

In February 2010, a CBI team went to Dewas police station and took
possession of a diary and hand drawings that had been recovered from
Joshi’s pocket by the local police when he was found murdered. The CBI
learnt that Joshi’s mobile phone, gun, and several personal belongings
had been taken away by RSS leaders from Joshi’s house immediately
after his murder. The local cops also told the CBI that they had been
under immense pressure not to investigate Joshi’s murder too keenly.

The CBI found the numbers of two senior RSS leaders in Joshi’s phone
book: Indresh Kumar and RSS spokesperson, Ram Madhav. Indresh’s number
had been listed as an “Emergency number”. Swami Asimanand’s cell
number was similarly listed. Besides this, other numbers in the diary
included the RSS Headquarters in Jhandewalan, New Delhi, and numbers
for firebrand BJP MP Yogi Adityanath.

The hand-drawn sketch proved to be of a bomb circuit. A Mumbai address
written beside the diagram led to a mass manufacturer of electrical
circuits but the manufacturer failed to identify Joshi when shown his
picture. Though Joshi had been formally expelled by the RSS, the CBI
managed to procure his call records between June and December 2007. An
analysis of the calls made and received during that time showed that
Joshi had remained in close touch with several senior RSS
functionaries even after his expulsion.

Given all this, Joshi may have taken many answers with him to his
pyre, but the murky footprint he left behind has left enough troubling
questions.

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