When Iragounda Patil coaxed his teenage nephew Malgounda to join the hardline Hindu group Sanatan Sanstha about a decade ago, his purpose was to ensure the boy did not “stray into bad company”. Never in his worst nightmares did the part-time teacher of Mathematics imagine that his decision would one day be blamed for Malgounda’s violent death.

In the late Nineties, as their home district of Sangli in southern Maharashtra rapidly built up an unsavoury reputation for being the state’s HIV-AIDS capital, Iragounda worried for his bright, young nephew, then in junior college. He had himself joined the Sanstha a couple of years earlier in 1997 — as a reporter for its weekly publication Sanatan Prabhat, and would also distribute it among Sanatan members in Jath taluka. To Iragounda, the Sanstha was the ideal emotional anchor — religious, spiritual, and deeply rooted in the values and traditions he cherished.

“I asked Malgounda to join the organisation and attain satisfaction through meditation¿ Sanatan was the means to achieve that,” Iragaounda told The Indian Express.

But police in Maharashtra and Goa believe it was a move that went horribly wrong. Malgounda, they say, got so deeply influenced by the Hindu extremist ideology of Sanatan that he got involved in a conspiracy to set off bombs and spark terror in Goa, where the organisation is headquartered. The 28-year-old was killed two weeks back after the bomb he and an accomplice, Yogesh Naik, were allegedly transporting, exploded before it could be planted at a Diwali celebration in Margao.

... contd.