JUNE 1, 2007

Haresh Bhatt: Get rid of their lathis… teach them [the RSS] to use guns… Bajrang Dal members undergo arms training… I am the first in the whole country to run a warg [training module]… I formed the first warg in Gujarat in 1987… with seven young men…

TEHELKA: In ’87?

Bhatt: Yes, in ’87…The [Babri Masjid] demolition that happenedlater, I gave training for that too… Forty young men from across the country were brought here… I also trained Bajrang Dal activists here in Sarkhej, which created a ruckus later… Rajesh Pilot even said in the Lok Sabha that training was being given in Sarkhej... training in demolition…

TEHELKA: You mean of the Babri Masjid..

Bhatt: Yes. The training to demolish the Babri Masjid was given in Sarkhej in Ahmedabad.

TEHELKA: So Pilot raised this question…

Bhatt: Yes… And a CBI inquiry and all… went on here…

TEHELKA: Against you?

Bhatt: Me… against the instructorshere... all of them.

TEHELKA: Okay.

Death worship Bhatt with the VHP’s Pravin Togadia

Bhatt: The training centre still exists…At the start, we gave them the same training they give in the army… judo, karate… rifle shooting… obstacle courses like in the army…
how to climb a 30-ft rope… bungee jumping… how to leap from one wall to another… all this in a 15-day training session… It still goes on… One session has just ended…

• • •

TEHELKA: When Godhra happened in 2002… now, Hindus hardly ever keep arms… so how then did they get weapons?…

Bhatt: I have my own gun factory… I used to make firecrackers… We made all the bombs there… Diesel bombs, pipe bombs, we made them there… and we used to distribute them from there as well… We ordered two truckloads of swords from Punjab… right here, in a village called Dhariya, we readied everything there… and then we distributed the samaan [arms]… At that time, the only thing was that the samaan was needed…

TEHELKA: Where did you get the arms from?

Bhatt:We got many country-made pistols… from MP, from UP… we got pistols from everywhere and I distributed them from here… I am talking about this for the first time…
nobody knew this secret.

TEHELKA: I know that Hindus do not keep weapons, apart perhaps fromkitchen knives…

Bhatt:We distributed so many weapons that people were shocked to see how many there were… We would make them here and then test them... We made a complete
launcher inside a pipe, right here in the factory... It was a launcher from the side and had piping over that… chaar ki pipe lagaate the… after closing the entire hole we filled that
with shrapnel and nails... and beneath that placed a 595 bomb… We’d set it off… it would go through a wall nine inches thick…

• • •

TEHELKA: Hareshbhai, you were saying that you got arms from Kanpur, but there was curfew…

Bhatt: Why couldn’t they have been brought?… Anything can be brought.

TEHELKA: I was thinking that if curfew…

Bhatt: I got them from MP… I got them from Bihar.

TEHELKA: But how, when curfew was in force?

Bhatt: Things come, everything can come.

TEHELKA: If it came from other states, it had to cross borders…

Bhatt: That’s it… they would smuggle it… and it wasn’t just one trip that came for me… there were scores of them.

TEHELKA: Our government wasn’t even in power in Kanpur then…

Bhatt: No we weren’t… Nor werewe ruling in MP.

TEHELKA: Not even in MP…

Bhatt: Not in MP… not in UP… not even in Bihar...

TEHELKA: So how could these consignments come?

Bhatt: Don’t ask me all this.

TEHELKA: But they did come…

Bhatt: Yes, they definitely came…You can ask [VHP treasurer] Rohitbhai… [about] the arrangements that were made… So many of our Hindus were dying, what was done?… These are the questions you should be asking…

TEHELKA: So only swords were brought…

Bhatt: No, he’ll tell you everything… I told you we made launchers… launchers with stands and with pipes this thick… in factories… We went to test them…

TEHELKA: You mean the rocketlaunchers…

Bhatt: Yes… we’d fill them with gunpowder… first fill them, close them, then light a 595 local-made to blast it all…
TEHELKA:Were these ever used?

Bhatt: So much was used in the border areas, that they were astonished at how it had all been transported.

TEHELKA:Were they used in Ahmedabad?

Bhatt: Yes... Ahmedabad… Rohitbhai will tell you…