Hours before the September 8 Malegaon serial blasts case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Anti-Terrorist Squad of the Maharashtra Police today filed the chargesheet in the case, claiming that its investigations were complete.

The ATS contends that the nine accused, who are allegedly active members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), had hatched and executed the conspiracy with the help of two Pakistanis in the textile town to “infuriate the entire Muslim community and trigger communal riots’’.

Thirty-one people died and 312 were injured in four blasts, of which three were inside the Hamidiya Masjid and Bara Kabrastan. The fourth was at Mushawart Chowk.

The Malegaon blasts chargesheet is clear about the motive but, unlike the July 11 Mumbai serial blasts chargesheet, it fails to establish the identities of the two Pakistanis. All that it says is that one of the Pakistanis is ‘‘learnt to be Muzammil’’, while the other is unidentified.

Investigations have also failed to establish the identities of the two men who had bought the bicycles that were used to plant the bombs, though the ATS claims in the chargesheet that the prime conspirators and the planters have been arrested.

The chargesheet does not say how the 20 kg of RDX and other explosives used in the blasts reached Malegaon from Mumbai. It says the explosives were brought to Mumbai in the third week of July, after 7/11, by SIMI activists Mohammed Ali Sheikh and Asif Khan alias Junaid. And that they handed it over to prime accused Shabbir Ahmed Masiullah.

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