BALLIA, 3 AUG

Major Ramesh Upadhyay (retd), recently acquitted by a special NIA court in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, on Sunday, claimed he was tortured in jail to falsely implicate Yogi Adityanath, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, and RSS leader Indresh Kumar in the case.

Upadhyay said the names of Adityanath, now Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Bhagwat, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and Indresh Kumar were repeatedly mentioned by police during interrogations.

"From the first day, I knew I was innocent. I even volunteered for NARCO and polygraph tests thrice, but the ATS never submitted the reports to court," he told PTI.

Upadhyay, a native of Ram Nagar village in Ballia district, was arrested on 28 October 2008, four days after he was detained.

He said he faced severe physical and mental torture from the moment he was taken into custody.

"I was kept in solitary confinement for years. Officials pressured me to name political and spiritual leaders in exchange for leniency and early release," he alleged.

Upadhyay claimed he never visited Malegaon and had no connection to the incident.

"The investigation was politically driven, influenced by the then UPA government. Officers worked under pressure from leaders like Sonia Gandhi, Digvijaya Singh, and Sushil Kumar Shinde," he alleged.

Though offered to become a government witness, Upadhyay said, he refused to give a false statement.

"I faced 25 charges. All were proven false in court. Justice has finally been served after 17 years," he said.

Upadhyay, who once contested assembly and Lok Sabha elections, said he has no political ambitions now and had contested only symbolically to prove his innocence.