Who Is Pragya Thakur? 5 Key Facts From Sadhvi to BJP MP

National News: Nearly 17 years after the 2008 bomb blast in the communally sensitive Malegaon town of Maharashtra, the special NIA court on Thursday delivered its much-awaited verdict. Six people were killed in this blast, while more than 100 people were injured. The court has acquitted all seven accused, including former Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, of all charges.

These accused were being tried in the special court of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). But after considering all the evidence and arguments, the court acquitted them. The NIA had earlier demanded strict punishment against all of them.

Who were the accused?

There were a total of seven accused in this case—Pragya Singh Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, Major (retired) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, and Sameer Kulkarni. All of them were charged with serious charges like conspiracy of the Malegaon bomb blast and murder.

Who is Sadhvi Pragya Thakur? 

1. Accused of Malegaon blast—Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, a resident of Madhya Pradesh, has been an activist of AVBP. She was arrested on 29 September 2008 after the Malegaon bomb blast in the Nasik district of Maharashtra. Serious charges like murder, conspiracy, and inciting communal violence were leveled against her under sections of UAPA and IPC.

2. Won the Lok Sabha elections in 2019—Pragya Thakur contested the Lok Sabha elections from Bhopal in 2019 and defeated Congress leader Digvijay Singh by a huge margin. This was her first election, in which she won by a margin of 364,822 votes.

3. Claim of innocence—In her final statement in the court, Pragya Thakur declared herself completely innocent. She said, 'All the allegations leveled against me were illegal and motivated by malicious intentions. The evidence was tampered with, and I was deliberately implicated in a false case.'

4. Controversial comments—Pragya Thakur has been in controversies many times due to her statements. She had called Nathuram Godse a 'patriot,' which created a ruckus in the whole country. Even the top leadership of BJP had criticized her statement.

5. Association with Sadhvi and AVBP—Before joining politics, Pragya Thakur was associated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and presented herself as "Sadhvi."

NIA's stand

The NIA had convicted all the accused in the court and demanded 'appropriate punishment' against them. But the court acquitted the accused after taking into account all the facts, evidence, and testimonies of the case.