NEW DELHI: An Indian court on Wednesday sentenced two Hindu hardliners to life in prison for triggering an explosion at a Muslim shrine in western India that killed three people and injured more than a dozen a decade ago.

The court handed the sentence to the convicts in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan state. A third convict in the case died after the 2007 blast, which occurred in Ajmer, a Muslim pilgrimage centre in Rajasthan.

News reports said two of the convicts were former preachers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteer Corps, a Hindu group that has long been accused of stoking religious hatred against Muslims. India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party is a political wing of the RSS.

Investigators initially suspected the involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba, but later found that RSS supporters were involved in the blast.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2017