The Kanpur house from where Swami Amritanand Dev Tirth was detained on Wednesday. Picture by Naeem Ansari

Lucknow/Mumbai, Nov. 12: A mahant of the Jammu Sharda Sarvagyapeeth was today taken into custody from Kanpur for questioning in the Malegaon blast case.

Swami Amritanand Dev Tirth was whisked away around 2.30pm by a team from the Maharashtra anti-terrorist squad and over 50 policemen who swooped on a house in Kanpur’s Rautpur area.

The 40-year-old mahant, earlier known as Dayanand Pandey, had apparently been staying in the house for the past three days on the pretext of meeting some disciples.

Hours later, the seer’s son Pawan and his chartered accountant, V.K. Kapoor, were questioned in Jammu, reports PTI. The police raided their homes and offices in the posh Trikuta Nagar area on a tip-off from the Maharashtra ATS but “nothing adverse was found against them”.

The ATS refused to divulge anything about the mahant’s alleged links with the September 29 blast but sources said his name had been dropped by Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, arrested in the case last week.

“He offered no resistance,” Uttar Pradesh additional director-general of police Brij Lal said, adding that the mahant had been detained on a Nashik court order that gave “permission to hand over the accused for inquiry”.

“It is now up to the ATS team from Mumbai to arrest him or release him after interrogation,” Lal said.

It is not known whether the Jammu peeth has any connection with Hindu fundamentalist leaders, but Mumbai police sources said the mahant had links with the Pune wing of Abhinav Bharat, a radical outfit.

The mahant was apparently a Bajrang Dal activist till he left Varanasi, his hometown, in 2003. He is reported to be a “conduit” for Hindu fundamentalists who have allegedly been planning retaliatory action against “Islamic terror”.

The police sources said the mahant, who spearheaded the Hindu agitation during the Amarnath land row, was a frequent visitor to Mumbai. He has also travelled to various cities in Uttar Pradesh, Malegaon in Maharashtra and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh.

He is reported to have held a “secret” meeting on July 12 in Bhopal with sadhvi Pragya Thakur, now in custody in the Malegaon blast case.

“Dayanand Pandey’s interrogation may throw light on militant Hindu organisations working to implement their retaliatory agenda against Islamic terror,” a source in Uttar Pradesh police said.

BJP MP Yogi Adityanath, however, dismissed the allegations as police “fantasy”.

“They are trying to prove Hindu saints are anti-nationals. I can tell you Mumbai police do not have any evidence against any Hindu spiritual leader,” he said.

In Mumbai, ATS chief Hemant Karkare said the seer would be arrested after preliminary inquiries and brought to Mumbai. “We had some photographs of this man and some telephone numbers…. Initial probe reveals he is the same man we are looking for.”

He claimed the ATS had information of the mahant’s “deep” links with Purohit and others arrested in the case and that he had a hand in the blast conspiracy.

“He could also have different names and aliases. We are probing if he has any previous crime record, but there is no confirmed information yet.”

School resignations

The principal and a clerk of Bhonsala Military School, where some of the accused held a meeting of the Abhinav Bharat days before the blast, have resigned after being questioned by ATS officials.