Mumbai: NIA on Monday formally arrested Lokesh Sharma, already in judicial custody in connection with the Samjhauta train bombing case, for his alleged role in the 2008 Malegaon blast.
Sharma was produced before the special MCOCA court of YD Shinde who remanded him to NIA custody till March nine. The special court had issued a production warrant against the accused on February 23. Mumbai: NIA on Monday formally arrested Lokesh Sharma, already in judicial custody in connection with the Samjhauta train bombing case, for his alleged role in the 2008 Malegaon blast.
Sharma was produced before the special MCOCA court of YD Shinde who remanded him to NIA custody till March nine. The special court had issued a production warrant against the accused on February 23. NIA has been given charge of terror cases which include Malegaon 2006 and 2008, Ajmer (Rajasthan), Samjhauta train blasts and Mecca-Masjid (Hyderabad).

Investigations into the Malegaon blast case had led the probe agency to suspect the hand of Hindu terror outfits. The then Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who was killed in the 26/11 attacks, was instrumental in the arrest of co-conspirators including a serving army officer, Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit.
ATS also arrested Sadhvi Pragya Singh as her bike was used in the blast, Shivnarayan Gopalsingh Kalsangra (electrician from Indore who assembled the bomb) and Shyam Bhawarlal Sahu (owns mobile servicing centre at Bhopal).
Besides Purohit, others accused in the charge sheet were Maj (retd) Ramesh Shivji Upadhyaya (Pune resident, accused of imparting training and taught bomb making), Sameer Sharad Kulkarni alias Chanakya Sameer (helped procure material for making the bomb), Ajay alias Raja Rahirkar (Pune-based treasurer of Abhinav Bharat) and Rakesh Dattatreya Dhawade (Pune-based weapons expert who helped procure weapons).
Jagdish Chintaman Mhatre (helped store weapons), Sudhakar Udaybhan Dhar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey alias Swami Amrutanand Devtirth (self-proclaimed Shankaracharya, resident of Jammu and Kashmir and a key conspirator), Sudhakar Onkarnath Chaturvedi (weapons were seized from him, was part of planning) and Pravin Mutalik (planted bomb).
The case, which was transferred to NIA, has two proclaimed offenders Ramji alias Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange (both bomb planters).
PTI