ATS raids politician's farmhouse for clues of bomb making by right-wingers

Shrikant Pangarkar told the cops that the group gathered at the farmhouse

After the arrest of Shrikant Pangarkar, a former Shiv Sainik from Jalna, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) investigating a right-wing terror plot has now turned its focus on another ex-corporator from the same town. The ATS spent five hours searching the Jalna farmhouse of a former BJP corporator, now with the NCP. The agency has not released the name of the politician or arrested him yet. The cops were looking for clues of bomb assembly, based on the interrogation of Pangarkar.

The ex-corporator's farmhouse in located in the interiors of Jalna district, and cops believe that it may have been used not just to assemble bombs but also for target practice by the suspected shooters of three rationalists in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

ATS officers said they had seized certain items from the farmhouse for further investigation

An ATS team, along with the bomb detection and disposal squad, and dog squad, conducted a search of the property for over five hours. Sources in the ATS said they were conducting further investigation, and had seized certain items from the house and are also questioning the owner.

The farm house came up during Pangarkar's interrogation, after which a team of from ATS's Aurangabad unit conducted the search. A senior ATS official said the farmhouse owner is being questioned to see if he is connected to Pangarkar or Sachin Andure, who allegedly shot Dr Narendra Dabholkar.

Shrikant Pangarkar

Karnataka angle
The ATS is also probing if the arms seized from Nalasopara and Pune came from Karnataka, as last week, a gun was recovered from Aurangabad which was given to Andure by Amol Kale (accused of murdering Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru). It was sent by officials of CBI for ballistic tests to see if it was used in any of the murders. It is clear that the arms were moved around, so the ATS is checking if the weapons were sent from Karnataka.

05
Number of hours they searched the property

04
Number of suspects arrested so far

The case so far
The ATS recovered 20 crude bombs, along with country-made pistol with magazines, country guns, air gun, pistol barrels, partially-made pistols, trigger mechanism, number plates of vehicles, a chopper, hard disks, pen drives and other material on August 9 to 10. Apart from Pangarkar, the four other arrested accused are Vaibhav Raut, 40, Sharad Kalaskar, 25, Sudhanva Gondhalkar, 39, and Avinash Anant Pawar alias Ajit Dada, 30. Andure and Kalaskar are the alleged shooters in the 2013 Dabholkar murder case.

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