Sanatan Sanstha member Prashant Juvekar, arrested for his alleged role in the 2009 Goa blast, was included in the group tasked with engineering the explosion due to his 'aggressiveness' in propagating the outfit's ideology, Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad officials said on Tuesday.
"Juvekar became a member of the right-wing Hindu outfit in 2006, a year after his parents got associated with it. Since then, he was actively involved in the Sanstha's activities and was very aggressive in propagating its ideology. His speeches were crowd pullers and made people sit up and listen," an official probing the case told PTI on condition of anonymity.
Juvekar, absconding since October 16 last year, was arrested from near Bhusawal railway station in Jalgaon district on July 31 for his alleged role in the blast that killed Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik, members of the same organisation, the ATS said.
A 7.65 mm pistol was allegedly recovered from the 24-year-old, who hails from Ratnagiri.
"Impressed by his aggressiveness in promoting and propagating the Sanstha's ideology, Patil decided to make him part of the group of eleven that was entrusted to trigger the blast," the official added.
According to the ATS, Juvekar met Patil on August 23 in Goa when the duo went to an unknown location where a terror-training programme was organised for three days and Juvekar learnt making IEDs, detonators and timing devises among other explosives.
The two had also discussed the plan to execute the blast.
The October 16 blast occurred on Diwali-eve in a busy thoroughfare in Margao, barely a few hundred metres from a place where Chief Minister Digamber Kamat was participating in some celebrations, killing Patil and Naik.
The National Investigating Agency, which is probing the blast case, had filed a chargesheet against 11 Sanatan Sanstha members and made five arrests prior to Juvekar's arrest by the ATS.
Those named in the chargesheet include the deceased bomb makers Patil and Naik.
Since the blast, Juvekar frequently changed his location to evade arrest, the ATS claimed, adding the accused stayed in suburban Malad for sometime at his maternal uncle's place and travelled to various places including Baroda, Rajkot, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Delhi, Varanasi and Bihar.
Juvekar is a commerce graduate but dropped out from his law course. His mother and father are retired bank employees, the ATS said about his antecedents.
Three people -- Sarang Akolkar, Jayaprakash alias Anna, Rudra Patil are wanted in the case, the ATS added.