A Violent End: The collapse of a murder trial weakens the fight against Hindu fundamentalism

'On 29 December 2007, Sunil Joshi, a one-time member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, was shot and killed near his home in the district of Dewas, in Madhya Pradesh. Nearly a decade later, in February 2017, eight people who were charged with his killing were acquitted of the crime. Joshi’s murder, it appeared, was destined to remain unsolved. The significance of the acquittals extended far beyond the case of Joshi’s killing. One of the theories that investigating agencies proposed for the murder was that it was linked to Joshi’s involvement in some of the most heinous acts of mass murder in India’s history: the Malegaon blasts of 2006, and the Samjhauta Express blast, the Ajmer Sharif blast and the Mecca Masjid blast of 2007, which, in all, killed 111 people. One of Joshi’s alleged co-conspirators in these attacks, a Hindutva activist named Pragya Singh Thakur, was among those accused, and then acquitted, of his murder. If Joshi’s killing erased key information about the blasts, the failure of the murder investigation further weakens the possibility that the larger network of conspiracies will be uncovered, and their perpetrators punished...'