Six months after his brother?s arrest, Prashant Ashtekar (23), one of the absconding accused in the Goa blast case, has said that he would be surrendering before the court at the earliest. He also admitted to have played a role in stealing the hard disk of the computer of his brother Dhananjay Ashtekar which, the police claim, had vital information about the circuits that were being allegedly prepared for engineering last October?s Goa blast.
? I learnt about the charges slapped against me from the newspapers. I can?t be evading the police for a long time. I would be surrendering before the court soon and hopeful of getting discharged from the case,? said Prashant. Prashant and his brother Dhananjay, who is in custody now, have been named as accused in the Goa blast case.
On October 16, a bomb went off in the commercial town of Margao. Two of the Sanatan Sanstha activists Malgounda Patil and Yogesh Naik were killed in the blast.
Later, Vinayak Taklekar, an MBA who worked as an assistant HR manager with a seven-star hotel in Goa, Vinayak Patil, Dhanajay Ashtekar and Dilip Mangoankar were arrested in the case. Prashant Astekar, Prashant Juvekar, Sarang Akolkar and Jaiprakash Putturu are wanted in the case. The policesay the main aim behind the blast was to spark communal violence in the state.
Prashant has admitted to have played a role in stealing the hard disk from a computer used by Dhananjay. Sources said the day Dhananjay was picked up by the Goa police, the hard disk had gone missing.
?Since the computer belonged to me, I didn?t want myself to be named in the case, so I took away the hard disk.? he said. The police say the hard disk contains important pieces of evidence like the circuit models that were used in the Goa blast.
The siblings? friends have described both as deeply spiritual and good at studies. After studying till Class XII in a local college in Chiplun in Ratnagiri district, both went to Ichalkaranji to do a degree in engineering. Prashant had stood VII in the Shivaji University (2009 batch) in the information technology section. Just before the blast in October last year, he had also bagged a job in an IT firm in Borivali in Mumbai.
?Our batch was hit by recession and all major companies had stopped hiring. I got a job in an IT firm in Borivali, but they didn?t pay well. And Dhananjay had been arrested by then, so I left the job to join another IT company in Sangli. But even I have stopped reporting to work there as I have to surrender before the court,? said Prashant.
Meanwhile, the Ashetakars? feel that their sons have been falsely implicated in the case. The family calls itself sanatan sadhaks. ?We only follow what is said in the satsang. Both my sons are spiritual,? said mother Kavita Ashtekar, a housewife.
?We have taken pains to bring up our kids while teaching them engineering and are not involved in the case. It has ruined my sons? careers and has a taken on toll on my husband,? she added.