By The Wire Staff
Mangaluru: Yashwant Sahdev Shinde, a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak (preacher), has written to Karnataka home minister Priyank Kharge and Union home minister Amit Shah demanding that the RSS, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal be declared “terrorist organisations”.
In his letter, Shinde has also alleged that senior figures including RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, RSS leader Indresh Kumar and VHP general secretary Milind Parande should be “arrested and investigated” for their roles in the series of bomb explosions that occurred in different parts of the country in 2000s.
The letter, which Shinde sent out early in August, is the latest in his years-long campaign alleging Hindu right-wing involvement in a string of 2000-era bomb blasts that were examined by courts and investigators but eventually ended in acquittals.
Shinde, who was a full-time RSS worker from 1990, quit the organisation after he was allegedly asked to “join a bomb preparation and training team”. In August 2022, Shinde, in a sworn affidavit before a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Nanded, Maharashtra, claimed that he had participated in meetings where RSS and VHP members, including Parande, now the VHP’s general secretary, planned a series of bomb blasts across the country.
In the affidavit, Shinde had claimed that he was given bomb-making training under Parande’s guidance in 2003 alongside around 20 others.
The affidavit was filed as part of the then-ongoing trial in the April 2006 Nanded blast, in which an explosion at the home of an alleged RSS worker, Laxman Rajkondwar, killed his son Naresh and another man, Himanshu Panse, reportedly a VHP activist. The CBI had said it was a “bomb assembly operation”, possibly intended for a mosque in Aurangabad.
Shinde sought to be made a witness in the case. Initially, his affidavit was considered by the then trial court judge, A.R. Dhamecha, but he was abruptly transferred before the next hearing. The new presiding judge rejected Shinde’s application.
On January 4, 2025, a trial court in Nanded acquitted all nine surviving accused in the case.
In several interviews at the time, Shinde made explosive claims about being trained for covert operations in Pakistan and bombings in India that could be “blamed on Muslims”, alleging that fellow trainees had bombed mosques in Jalna, Purna and Parbhani in 2003-2004.
While the initial CBI inquiries claimed that strong corroborative evidence was available to support the claims, the cases, when they came before the court, all ended in acquittals under the current Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
Neither the RSS nor the VHP has responded to Shinde’s allegations in the four years since he first made them.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
