Malegaon-accused Purohit writes to PM, says case fabricated

NEW DELHI: The first serving Army officer to be arrested on terror charges, Malegaon blast accused Lt Col ShrikantPurohit has written a letter to Prime Minister NarendraModi claiming that the almost six-year-old case against him was “fabricated” by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS).
“I have been under imprisonment for the last five years and seven months.The case is yet to come up for hearing and hence far away from coming to any conclusion... The entire case against me is fabricated and supported by stage-managed and planted evidence,” he has written.
In the letter, he alleged that the “Maharashtra ATS created terrorists out of innocent and patriotic lot of sons of soil for reasons best known to them and their policy matters”.
Purohit claimed that in the Army court of inquiry, two Army personnel had stated that they had apprehended a Maharashtra Police official planting false evidence at the house of one of the accused.
He appealed for an early hearing for himself and others like him who are in jail.
Purohit had written a similar letter to then home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde in February, stressing his innocence and prolonged incarceration.
Purohit, arrested in November 2008 for the Mecca Masjid blast in Malegaon, said he was in jail as an undertrial for over five years without bail and despite the National Investigation Agency (NIA) taking over the case in April 2011, no chargesheet was filed by it.
The agency has been maintaining that the delay was not from its side but from Purohit’s. “How are we going to file a chargesheet when we have not even been allowed to question him in custody as yet by the court. It is his lawyers, who through innumerable petitions in the court, have delayed the case,” said an NIA officer.