Right-wing terror: ATS to probe arrested trio's link to letter bomb incidents

ATS sources said the material Vaibhav Raut, 40, and Sharad Kalaskar, 25, held from Nalasopara, and Sudhanva Gondhalkar, 39, held from Pune, used along with the circuit hints at a link

The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) will now probe if there is any link between the arrested suspects and the letter bomb incidents that took place earlier in Ahmednagar and Pune.

ATS sources said the material Vaibhav Raut, 40, and Sharad Kalaskar, 25, held from Nalasopara, and Sudhanva Gondhalkar, 39, held from Pune, used along with the circuit hints at a link. The three, who are in ATS custody till August 18, will be questioned about it.

Letter bombs
In a blast at Ahmednagar in March, three courier firm employees were injured after a parcel bomb went off. The parcel was meant to be delivered to Sanjay Nahar, the chief of Pune-based NGO Sarhad, which works for Kashmiri children. Nahar told mid-day over the phone that he had got a call from a security agency in Delhi asking if the ATS had informed im of any links with the three. He clarified that no such communication had happened.

In May 2016, a letter bomb was found on the premises of the Film Television Institute of India in Pune. The letter warned against support to Kahaiya Kumar of JNU. Another one was found a few days later at the Department of Communication and Journalism (Ranade Institute) in Pune.

Wide open
A senior ATS officer said the probe is wide open and it was also being investigated if the three played a role in the murders of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare.

The suspects were picked up when they were allegedly planning terror attacks in Mumbai, Pune, Nalasopara, Satara and Kolhapur. Subsequent raids in Pune and Nalasopara have led to seizures of crude bombs, 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.

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