Mumbai: All the 10 accused in the Malegaon blast case have been booked under a stringent law, which allows the police not file charges against suspects for up to 180 days.
The blast on September 29, which killed five people in the communally sensitive textile town, was planned by an organised crime group, said the Anti-Terrorism Squad of the Maharashtra Police on Thursday.
The accused, two of whom are Hindu seers and one an Army officer, will therefore be booked under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
Under MCOCA, the ATS will get six months to file a chargesheet against the accused, as compared to 90 days under other laws.
ATS chief Hemant Karkare said probe into the blast is about to be completed and it is not politically influenced. "There is no political pressure in the investigations into the Malegaon blast," he said.
The ATS said it has found a video which shows Sadhvi Pragya, self-styled spiritual guru Dayanand Pandey and Sameer Kulkarni, leader of the Madhya Pradesh-based radical Hindu group, Abhinav Bharat, together on stage. The trio is currently under arrest and in judicial custody in connection with the Malegaon blast.
The video was taken on April 12, 2008, in Bhopal at a function organised by Kulkarni and the group president Himani Savarkar, a relative of the late Hindutva ideologue and freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, known as Veer Savarkar.
(With inputs from IANS and PTI)
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