Patil had been in touch with Vikram Vinay Bhave, arrested in the Maharashtra cases, DIG Ravindra Yadav said, emphasising that the explosives used in all the cases bore strong similarities..

The administrator of the Sanatan Sanstha in Goa and a high-ranking member in the right-wing saffron organisation, Patil had made a trip to Sangli just a few days before the Margao blast.

He was a very active member of the organisation and we have been able to establish his presence in Miraj and Sangli during last months communal riots there, Yadav said.
The gelatin sticks used to fashion the crude bomb which also critically injured another Sanatan man, Yogesh Naik, had come from the Suraj Explosives Ltd factory in Nagpur. Three of the four IEDs that the police suspect were to be planted during the crowded Divali festivities around Margao, were defused. Naik is still in a coma.

Asked if the police would move for a ban on the Sanatan, whose activities in Goa have been under a cloud for a while now, Yadav said the evidence was being weighed meticulously and would be placed before the authorities. It is for the government to take a decision, he said.

A large group of villagers protested before the Sanatans ashram at Ramnathi, Ponda on Sunday to push for a ban on the right-wing saffron organisation.
Meanwhile the SIT on Monday pursued its relentless examination of the head of the Sanatan ashram Virendra Marathe and the group editor of the Sanatan Prabhat Prithviraj Hazare.

Two others, Vinay Tarwadkar and Vinayak Patil closely associated with the injured Naik were also being examined.


‘We are being victimised’

The Sanatan Sanstha said on Monday that it was being deliberately targeted and victimised by Goa’s Home Minister Ravi Naik who wanted to politicise the Margao blast, reports DHNS from Panaji.

All praise for BJP leader Manohar Parrikar’s half-hearted attempts to defend the organisation, the right-wing group said it wanted an impartial enquiry but the Goa police had acted in a high-handed manner by seizing objects from the ashram and threatening its members.

The Margao blast was an excuse for the Congress government to harass Sanatan members whose homes in Maharashtra, Goa, Kerala and Gujarat, had been searched, the right-wing group said.