NEW DELHI — Four Hindus have been arrested and charged in a bombing that killed five people last month, Indian counterterrorism police said Friday.
The arrests signaled a change of course for police, who have blamed Muslim extremists for a wave of bombings that have killed more than 145 people across the country since May.
A group called the Indian Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, and police have arrested dozens of Muslims who they say belong to that and another Muslim student group.
But several human rights groups accuse the police of an anti-Muslim bias and say they are arresting Muslims at random. India, a Hindu-majority country, has about 130 million Muslim citizens.
The attack last month, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, occurred in the town of Malegaon, near Mumbai. The bomb used in the attack was placed on a motorcycle and exploded amid a crowd.
Police said the four suspects are under investigation for their alleged association with Hindu radical groups.
One of the suspects, Pragya Singh, calls herself a sadhvi, which means saint. She was detained by Mumbai authorities on allegations that she was linked to the motorcycle used in the attack. Police said Singh, who is in her late 20s, might also have helped plan the attack.
"There was a lot of effort to hide the ownership of the motorcycle," said Hemant Karkare, chief of the Mumbai Anti-Terror Squad. "They have tried to erase the engine and chassis numbers with chemicals. The registration number was bogus."
Singh's father, Chandrapal Singh, however, told reporters that even if the motorcycle belonged to his daughter, she was a spiritual being and incapable of hurting innocent people.
Media reports said Pragya Singh has been associated with the student wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and the women's wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or the World Hindu Council.
Karkare said pamphlets of several Hindu extremist groups were recovered during the arrests.
Milind Marathe, the national vice president of the student wing of the BJP, said that police had not named his organization in the investigation. "The media is sensationalizing the news, and we are thinking of taking legal action against them," he said.
In the past two decades, Indians have been deeply divided over the rise of Hindu nationalist forces across the country. Several of the groups say the government has appeased the narrow interests of religious minorities, and some have called for India to be declared a Hindu nation.
Members of these groups have been accused of involvement in recent attacks on Christians in the eastern state of Orissa.
Calls for a ban on extremist Hindu groups, including Vishwa Hindu Parishad, have gained momentum among some political groups.
"We have been asking for a ban on these groups for so long, but the country was not willing to listen to us," said Laloo Prasad Yadav, India's railway minister and a BJP opponent. "All these groups are somehow connected to the BJP."