Main Yashwant Shinde Bol Raha Hoon

An RSS worker trained in firearms and bomb-making reveals the Sangh's extremist underbelly

In a series of four interviews over the course of September, Yashwant Shinde, a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak-full-time worker-spoke to Sagar, a staff writer at The Caravan. Shinde explained how he was trained to carry out covert operations in Pakistan and conduct bombings across India that could be blamed on Muslims. In 2003 and 2004, he alleged, his fellow trainees bombed mosques in the Maharashtra towns of Jalna, Purna and Parbhani.

Others who allegedly helped facilitate the conspiracy have been tied to a bombing campaign that killed more than one hundred and twenty people over five years. Most of Shinde's claims line up with the details of these cases in media reports and court records. It is not possible to fully verify Shinde's claims unless they are tested against evidence such as phone records, training-camp registers, forensics reports and crime scene videos and photographs, which can only be accessed by investigative agencies. Many of these allegations were mentioned in an affidavit that Shinde submitted to a district court at Nanded, in which he asked to be made a witness in the 2006 Nanded bombing case. The Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, which had investigated the case and filed a closure report, has opposed his application.