Malegaon case: Col Purohit likely to be sacked by Army - India - The Times of India
NEW DELHI: Lt-Colonel Shrikant Prasad Purohit, arrested in November 2008 by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in connection with the Malegaon blasts, is likely to be sacked by the Army soon.
Though Purohit (38) is facing proceedings in a civilian court for the Malegaon blasts, apart from being questioned in some other cases, the Army's own court of inquiry (CoI) held under the Lucknow-based Central Command is learned to have recommended that his services be terminated with immediate effect.
"The CoI report is being considered by the Army HQ at present. It will then be forwarded to the defence ministry for final approval,'' admitted an official on Thursday.
The episode represents a dark blot on the largely apolitical and secular credentials of the 1.13-million strong Army. It was the first time that one of its officers was arrested for being involved in a terror attack, and that too in a case where Hindu radical elements targeted Muslims through the Malegaon blasts on September 29, 2008.
The only other such incident in recent years was in 2006 when three jawans of the Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry had come under the scanner for being in touch with Lashkar-e-Taiba militants.
The arrest of Purohit, a military intelligence officer who was commissioned in 1994 after passing out of the Officers' Training Academy at Chennai, had forced the Army to conduct internal checks to ensure there was no radical right-wing penetration in its ranks. Defence minister A K Antony had then held that no infiltration of Hindutva elements into the Army had been established in the investigation.
Purohit was arrested after being moved from Pachmarhi (Madhya Pradesh), where he was doing a Arabic language course at the Army Educational Corps Training College and Centre, to Mumbai to facilitate his questioning by the ATS.
The ATS had also arrested Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Dayananad Pandey and a retired major, Ramesh Upadhyaya, among others, for the blasts, which were allegedly planned by radical right-wing Hindu outfit Abhinav Bharat as a retaliation against the series of bomb blasts engineered by jehadi terrorists in different cities.
NEW DELHI: Lt-Colonel Shrikant Prasad Purohit, arrested in November 2008 by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in connection with the Malegaon blasts, is likely to be sacked by the Army soon.
Though Purohit (38) is facing proceedings in a civilian court for the Malegaon blasts, apart from being questioned in some other cases, the Army's own court of inquiry (CoI) held under the Lucknow-based Central Command is learned to have recommended that his services be terminated with immediate effect.
"The CoI report is being considered by the Army HQ at present. It will then be forwarded to the defence ministry for final approval,'' admitted an official on Thursday.
The episode represents a dark blot on the largely apolitical and secular credentials of the 1.13-million strong Army. It was the first time that one of its officers was arrested for being involved in a terror attack, and that too in a case where Hindu radical elements targeted Muslims through the Malegaon blasts on September 29, 2008.
The only other such incident in recent years was in 2006 when three jawans of the Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry had come under the scanner for being in touch with Lashkar-e-Taiba militants.
The arrest of Purohit, a military intelligence officer who was commissioned in 1994 after passing out of the Officers' Training Academy at Chennai, had forced the Army to conduct internal checks to ensure there was no radical right-wing penetration in its ranks. Defence minister A K Antony had then held that no infiltration of Hindutva elements into the Army had been established in the investigation.
Purohit was arrested after being moved from Pachmarhi (Madhya Pradesh), where he was doing a Arabic language course at the Army Educational Corps Training College and Centre, to Mumbai to facilitate his questioning by the ATS.
The ATS had also arrested Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Dayananad Pandey and a retired major, Ramesh Upadhyaya, among others, for the blasts, which were allegedly planned by radical right-wing Hindu outfit Abhinav Bharat as a retaliation against the series of bomb blasts engineered by jehadi terrorists in different cities.
