Panaji, Oct 20 (IANS) Goa police had been tipped off over a month ago about the suspicious activities of Malgonda Patil, a Sanatan Sanstha (SS) activist killed in a blast on Diwali eve while ferrying an improvised explosive device (IED), official sources said here Tuesday.
State home ministry sources told IANS, that the information on the SS member from Sangli was passed on to the police after his name had cropped up in investigations carried out by the Mumbai anti-terror squad (ATS) in the 2008 Thane blast case.
Patil's shuttling between the Goa ashram of the Sanstha -- a Hindu right-wing group -- and riot affected Sangli-Miraj area of adjacent Maharashtra during September had also caught the attention of the central agencies, which had then red-flagged Patil and informed the Criminal Investigation Department of the police here.
"Had the police intelligence network mounted an effective surveillance on Patil, there was a possibility of the Margao (Oct 16) blast being nipped in the bud," a home ministry official said.
There were more queries about the surveillance on Patil after the local media published transcripts of a conversation between a receptionist employed at the SS ashram in Ponda, 30 km from here and police sub inspector Prakash Giri. In the conversation which took place more than five days before the Margao blast, Giri asked the receptionist for Patil and claimed he knew him "very well".
Deputy Inspector General (DIG) R.S. Yadav confirmed the conversation had taken place, but said Giri had called the ashram for a Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) query.
"Malgonda Patil was the administrator of the SS ashram. Our officer knew about his position there. Therefore he asked for Patil, so these FCRA queries could be addressed," Yadav said.
He admitted that the police had no inkling about any of Patil's suspicious activities and that Giri's query was purely FCRA related.
"Now we have learnt that Malgonda Patil was in touch with Vikram Vinay Patil, one of the accused in the Thane blast last year," Yadav added. "He was also present in Sangli during the riots (in September 2009) there."