Radical Goa Hindu outfit denies link with arrested terror suspects, threatens legal action

Sanatan Sanstha is suspected to have links with those being probed for the murders of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi and Lankesh.

Mumbai: The Sanatan Sanstha Monday said it has nothing to do with the Hindutva activists arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) for the murders of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi. The outfit also said it will take legal action against media groups linking it to the men arrested.

The Sanatan Sanstha and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti addressed a press conference in Mumbai to emphasise that their organisations only work for spirituality and Hindutva, and there is a deliberate conspiracy to defame them for the political gains of the Congress and Left parties. Families of slain rationalists Dabholkar and Pansare are also maligning Sanatan Sanstha, they said.

Sanatan Sanstha, a radical Hindu outfit based in Goa, is suspected to have links with those being probed for the murders of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi as well as journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh.

The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, an outfit that works with a stated aim of uniting Hindus and spreading awareness about dharma, also saw its name come up during investigation into the murders.

‘Will take legal action’

“None of those arrested are our saadhaks (seekers). In fact, we are hearing five of the names linked to the case for the first time,” said Chetan Rajhans, national spokesperson of the Sanatan Sanstha.

Rajhans said seekers are only those who live in Sanatan Sanstha’s ashrams and walk the path of spirituality or those who go house to house spreading the message of spirituality, and that the arrested do not make the cut.

He added that his organisation only works for spreading the message of spirituality and Hindutva and has never caused any social unrest or security related issue through its work.

“The ATS has said the investigation is at a preliminary stage and they cannot yet say if the accused are associated with any organisations. Maharashtra’s Minister of State for Home, Deepak Kesarkar, also said the same. But still there is a discourse, quoting ‘official sources’, that is blaming Sanatan Sanstha for everything. We have decided to take legal action against such false stories,” said Rajhans.

Sunil Ghanvat of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti said, “All this is a big conspiracy. We have always worked in a constitutional manner and have thousands supporting us.”

The activists said Hindutva organisations are being unfairly targeted after the arrests with reports of investigators going to different districts and locally making enquiries of staunch Hindu activists in the area.

Rajhans said there are 320 organisations working for the Hindutva cause, with many activists who work in unison, but they are all not necessarily directly connected with the organisation.

Probe into murders

Earlier this month, the ATS arrested Vaibhav Raut and Sharad Kalaskar in Nalasopara near Mumbai and Sudhanva Gondhalekar in Pune, and seized a huge cache of firearms and explosives. During the course of the investigation, Kalaskar allegedly confessed to directly participating in Dabholkar’s murder along with another person, Sachin Andure, who the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) later arrested.

Based on the investigation and interrogation of the accused, in the last few days, the ATS arrested two more persons — Shrikant Pangarkar from Jalna and Avinash Pawar from Ghatkopar.

Parallely, the CBI, which is investigating the Dabholkar murder case, has seized one black coloured country-made pistol (metal) with magazine and three 7.65 mm live cartridges, suspected to have been used in Lankesh and Dabholkar’s murders, from the house of one Rohit Rege, an associate of Andure’s.

Andure’s brother-in-law Shubhangi Surale, who Andure had originally given the weapon to as per the CBI, is also under the scanner.

Raut, Gondhalekar and Pangarkar have attended programmes and events with members of the Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti.

“All those who attend the Hindu convention are not our saadhaks. Just because they are Hindutva activists attending our events, it does not make them our saadhaks,” said Rajhans.

Dropping secular from Constitution

Although Rajhans maintained that the Sanatan Sanstha only uses constitutional means for its work, he also said the Indian Constitution does not protect Hindus and one of the organisation’s longstanding demands is to drop the word ‘secular’ from it.

“The word secular was originally not there in the Indian Constitution and was inserted only in 1976 under political pressure. We are making a demand through constitutional means to drop the word secular by using the same Article 368 that was used to insert the word in the first place,” said Rajhans.

The organisation’s logic, he said, is that the Constitution does not clearly define secularism and the term allows the targeting of Hindus.

Rajhans also distanced the Sanatan Sanstha from its mouthpiece Sanatan Prabhat, which has spoken about a religious war to create a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation) by 2023 saying the latter is an “independent organisation”.