Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti University offers honorary doctorate to Ajmer Dargah blast accused

New Delhi, 27 Nov 2019 [Fik/News Sources]: In a move that oozes bizarreness,  Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti Urdu Arabi Farsi University at Lucknow has conferred honorary Doctorate in  Literature on RSS leader Indresh Kumar.

Kumar was an accused in a 2007 bomb blast incident at the Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti Dargah in Ajmer.

The Ajmer Dargah bombing (also called the Ajmer Sharif blast) occurred on 11 October 2007, in the courtyard of Sufi saint Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer, Rajasthan, India, after the Iftar period had started.

At that point the explosion was suspected to have been the responsibility of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. The media characterised the attack as part of the conflict between ultra-conservative Islamic extremists against the Sufi-derived Islamic traditions popular in India.

Protesting against the move, top social and political activist Sandeep Pandey, who is vice president of the Social Party (India), and Mohammad Shoaib, advocate, who is the party’s president, said, “The vice chancellor of this university, Mahrukh Mirza, whose own educational qualifications are alleged to be suspect, should be asked what contribution Indresh Kumar has made to the society to deserve a D Litt?”

Pointing out that Kumar was served the honorary degree on at the university convocation held today ( November 21, 2019), Pandey and Shoaib said in a statement, “Ironically Indresh Kumar serves as margdarshak of Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM), associated with RSS, and Mahrukh Mirza is associated with MRM”.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2017 filed a closure report in the 2007 Ajmer Dargah blast case, declaring that it did not have “enough evidence” of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Indresh Kumar’s involvement in the terrorist bombing of the Ajmer shrine that killed three persons and injured over a dozen.