NEW DELHI: Home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde's remarks linking
BJP to terrorism may have irked the opposition, but the party may soon find one of its local leaders in National Investigation Agency's (NIA) net. The agency has recovered the pistol suspected to have been used in the murder of former RSS pracharak
Sunil Joshi from the house of Jitendra Sharma, a BJP leader in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh.
NIA suspects Jitendra, who is cousin of the Samjhauta Express and
Malegaon blasts accused
Lokesh Sharma, to have played a role in the attacks perpetrated by other Hindutva fundamentalists, and is likely to arrest him soon.
Lokesh also led the agency to the house of one
Dilip Jagtap from where another pistol was recovered by the agency. Interestingly, Jagtap is the brother of
a Congress corporator in Indore. Jagtap has been arrested in connection with Joshi murder is suspected to be the custodian of all arms and ammunition used by the group.
It has also come to light that Jagtap is involved in bicycle business and the agency is trying to ascertain if he had any role to play in helping Malegaon bombers procure bicycles which were used to plant bombs. Notably, however, the bicycles used in Malegaon had been bought locally by the planters.
According to sources, NIA had been looking for the weapon used in the murder following confessions made by
Lokesh Sharma and
Rajender Chaudhary that it was they who killed Joshi. Early this week, an NIA team took Lokesh Sharma to
Madhya Pradesh to look for the weapon.
Sharma led the team to the house of
Jitendra Sharma in Mhow from where the agency recovered a pistol hidden in a pile of bricks. While Jitendra has feigned ignorance about the pistol claiming Lokesh may have hidden it without his knowledge, NIA sleuths doubt his claim.
NIA had earlier recovered a pistol magazine from the house of one Balbir Singh in Madhya Pradesh. Singh, now under arrest in connection with the case, is suspected to have harbored Lokesh and Chaudhary in his house before they went on to kill Sunil Joshi in December 2007 on Indore-Dewas road. Chaudhary too has now been formally declared as an accused in the case and more arrests are likely, said NIA sources.
Madhya Pradesh police had earlier charged a completely different set of accused for the murder of Joshi.
