Empowered by the NIA court’s acquittal of all seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, the BJP on Thursday demanded an apology from the Congress for falsely implicating a number of people, including Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur.
Photo: IANS
Empowered by the NIA court’s acquittal of all seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, the BJP on Thursday demanded an apology from the Congress for falsely implicating a number of people, including Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur.
Addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters here, Ravi Shankar Prasad said that it was the Congress leadership that coined the term “saffron terror” for political gains.
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“We demand an apology from the Congress leadership, including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, for implicating these people in a false case,” he said.
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“The Congress party can go to any extent for the sake of vote-bank politics. On behalf of the BJP, we would like to say that it orchestrated a false narrative called ‘bhagwa aatankwad’.”
The former Union Minister alleged that it was Congress leaders, including P Chidambaram, Sushilkumar Shinde, and Rahul Gandhi, who coined the term “saffron terror” and used it on several occasions.
“Chidambaram mentioned the term while serving as the Union Home Minister in the Congress-led government. Similarly, Sushilkumar Shinde also used it while heading the Home Ministry. Rahul Gandhi said that saffron terror is more dangerous than Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT),” the BJP leader said.
Accusing the Congress of pursuing a line to impress minorities for votes, the former Union Law Minister said, “It was a well-calculated conspiracy of the Congress for vote-bank politics.”
The BJP MP further claimed that Chidambaram, in his capacity as Union Home Minister, deliberately propagated the idea of saffron terror as part of a larger strategy. Referring to the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, Prasad claimed top officials in the Home Ministry were pressured to modify official affidavits.
“In the Ishrat Jahan case, Chidambaram pressured then Home Secretary G.K. Pillai not to mention in the affidavit that Ishrat Jahan was an agent of Lashkar-e-Taiba, despite the LeT itself having claimed her as a martyr,” he said.
Referring to another senior official, he added, “A Home Ministry official named R.V.S. Mani also faced pressure during the affidavit-filing process. He was repeatedly pressured to alter the affidavit in this case, and even Chidambaram, who was then the Home Minister, forced him to do so.”
Reacting to Chidambaram’s recent remarks questioning the nationality of the Pahalgam attackers, the BJP leader took a sharp dig, saying, “Chidambaram doesn’t just give certificates to Pakistanis now, he also gave legitimacy to the dangerous idea of ‘bhagwa aatankwad’ back then.”
Earlier in the day, the NIA court acquitted all seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, giving them the benefit of doubt.
The seven individuals who were put on trial included Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, former BJP MP from Bhopal; Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, a serving officer in Military Intelligence at the time; Major (Retd) Ramesh Upadhyay; Ajay Rahirkar; Sudhakar Dwivedi; Sudhakar Chaturvedi; and Sameer Kulkarni.
On September 29, 2008, a bomb strapped to a motorcycle exploded near a mosque in Malegaon, a communally sensitive town in Maharashtra, killing six people and injuring 101 during the holy month of Ramzan.
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