Margao blast accused wants to surrender
HERALD REPORTER
PANJIM, June 7
Prashant Ashtekar, 23, one of the absconding Sanatan Sanstha ‘sadhaks’ accused in the Margao blast case, has said he will be surrendering before the court at the earliest. Ashtekar told the Indian Express that he can’t be constantly on the run.
The blast, in a scooter on October 16, when the Diwali Narkasur parade was on in Margao, killed two Sanatan Sanstha activists, Malgounda Patil and Yogesh Naik. After police investigations, Vinayak Taklekar, an MBA who worked as an assistant HR manager with a five-star hotel, Vinayak Patil, Prashant’s brother Dhananjay and Dilip Mangoankar were arrested. Prashant himself, Prashant Juvekar, Sarang Akolkar and Jaiprakash Putturu are wanted but absconding. Police believed the motive behind the blast was to spark communal violence in the state.
Prashant admitted that he removed the hard disk of the computer being used by his brother Dhananjay, which the police say had vital information about the circuits being prepared for the blast. Dhananjay was arrested six months ago. “Since the computer belonged to me, I didn’t want myself to be named in the case, so I took away the hard disk,” Prashant said.
The siblings are Ratnagiri natives, and described as very religious and good at studies. After Class XII in a local college in Chiplun in Ratnagiri district, both went to Ichalkaranji for engineering. Prashant stood eighth in Information Technology in the 2009 batch at Shivaji University. Just before the blast, he landed a job with an IT firm at Borivali in Mumbai.
“Our batch was hit by recession. All major companies stopped hiring. I got a job in an IT firm in Borivali, but they didn’t pay well. After Dhananjay was arrested, I left and joined another IT company in Sangli. But I then stopped reporting to work there,” said Prashant.
The boys’ parents, who are themselves ‘sadhaks’, insist their sons have been falsely implicated. “We only follow what is said in the Satsang,” said mother Kavita Ashtekar, a housewife. “We have taken pains to bring up our kids, and made them engineers. They are not involved in the case. It has ruined my sons’ careers and affected my husband’s health.” In a statement to the Goa Police after his arrest, Dhananjay had said their father introduced them to the Sanatan Sanstha.
