The Malegaon site after the explosion. File picture

Mumbai, Oct. 28: A retired army major who runs a pro-Hindu organisation in Pune was today arrested with an associate in connection with last month’s Malegaon blast.

Former major Ramesh Upadhyay, working president of Abhinav Bharat, and Sameer Kulkarni are the fourth and fifth suspects arrested in the case that has highlighted the participation of Hindu hawks in terror attacks.

Kulkarni, 35, too was involved with Abhinav Bharat, which hosted a website that advocated a sashastra (armed) India, rebuilt around the Hindu culture. The website was shut down on Sunday after the Mumbai anti-terrorist squad (ATS) detained the two Pune residents for questioning.

Upadhyay was picked up from his home but Kulkarni was detained from a house in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, where the case’s highest-profile suspect, sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, lived for three months before her arrest from Surat last week.

Kulkarni, according to a PTI report, is a former member of BJP student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, to which Pragya too once belonged.

Sources said Upadhyay and Kulkarni had been booked under the Unlawful Activities Act and would be taken to Nashik tomorrow to be produced before a court.

The ATS is also investigating links between the suspects and the Bhonsala Military School, formed “to inculcate military culture in the Bharatiya youth”.

The Bajrang Dal had organised a training camp at the school’s Nashik facility earlier this year. The school has a second facility in Nagpur.

Abhinav Bharat’s main objectives, listed in its constitution that was put up on the website, are to change the concept of Hindu sahishnuwad (tolerance) and establish a proactive and aggressive nationalism.

The website said the organisation was founded on June 12, 2006, at the Shivaji-built fort of Raigad. Its name mirrors that of the Abhinav Bharat Society, founded by Veer Savarkar, a Sangh parivar icon.

“Changing demographic patterns to include the marriages of conveniences among the self-centred political parties have compelled a group of patriots to come together to form this movement,” the website said, listing swarajya (self-rule), surajya (welfare state), suraksha (security) and sushanti (peace) as some of its chief aims.

The ATS had last week arrested Pragya, 38, from Surat in Gujarat and Shivnarain Kalsaangra, 38, and Shyam Sahu, 42, from Indore.