'Brother' Ramji wanted the bike, I gave it: Sadhvi

NEW DELHI: "Ramchandra Kalsangra alias Ramji is like my brother. He asked me 'Didi, can I take your bike'? So I gave it to him," Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, discharged in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, told the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in her statement.
"I didn't attend any meeting for the planning of any attack for which I was arrested by Maharashtra ATS.I was framed by the police," she further said.
The statement is part of the chargesheet filed by the agency on Friday, which sought to drop MCOCA charges against all the accused while giving a clean chit to Thakur and five others on the basis of "insufficient evidence".
The NIA has claimed that the LML Freedom motorbike, originally belonging to Thakur, was with Kalsangra for almost two years before the blast in September 2008. The agency backed its assertion with the statements of witnesses who claimed that the bike was with Kalsangra for long, who sent it for repairs and regularly used it before a bomb was planted on it.
Officials said Thakur never asked Kalsangra to return the bike. "There are reliable witnesses who have said that Thakur was never seen with the bike for a very long time. In her case, the ATS claimed that it was she who handed over the bike to Ramji before the blast which could not be proved," an NIA officer said.
The NIA chargesheet cited 12-13 additional witnesses whose statements, the agency claimed, were ignored by the Maharashtra ATS. These include five Army officers who discredited the ATS's RDX theory and, in fact, revealed that sub-inspector Shekhar Bagde of the ATS had planted RDX traces in the house of retired Army officer Sudhakar Chaturvedi, an accused in the case, in Deolali.
The fresh testimony of the five Army officers and other additional witnesses led the NIA to trash the ATS's theory of meetings attended by Thakur and theft of RDX from the Army.