Malegaon order: BJP seeks Congress apology for ‘tainting' Pragya Thakur image
Senior BJP leader and national spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad hailed the verdict, which he said decimated a 'calculated conspiracy' to 'peddle a narrative around 'Saffron terror' across the country'. He said it was hatched by the Congress, which was in power at the Centre at that time, for the sake of 'votebank politics'.
A special court in Mumbai Thursday acquitted all the accused in the case, including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, nearly 17 years after a powerful bomb blast in Maharashtra's Malegaon killed six people and injured more than a hundred.
The court's verdict in the case, the BJP MP said, clearly states that there is a lack of adequate proof against all the accused and the prosecution could not prove it, demanding restitution for an attempt to taint Pragya Thakur's 'image of a sage' and 'decorated Indian Army veteran' Lt Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit.
'Colonel Purohit, a highly decorated army officer who had waged a big battle against terrorism in Kashmir, was implicated in it; RDX was (allegedly) recovered from his house… Pragya Thakur, a very good Sadhvi leader; it was said that from her motorcycle, a bomb was brought,' he said.
'For 10–12 days, she was tortured so severely that even walking was difficult for her later on; you all have seen that, and other Army officials, too, were implicated. It was a well-calculated conspiracy of the Congress party for sheer votebank politics,' he alleged, adding that the BJP welcomed the verdict and was happy that 'this conspiracy was destroyed' despite a 'diabolical design'.
Prasad asked whether the prosecution would apologise to Sadhvi Pragya for 'torturing her' even as he sought compensation for all the accused in the case for having 'lost 17 years of their lives'.
'Pragya Thakur's entire personality as a sage was tainted, and Col Purohit, a very brave soldier of the Indian Army, who was bestowed with several medals and commendations for work against terrorists in Kashmir, what award or prize can he look forward to?' asked Prasad.
Recalling the remarks on 'Saffron terror' by former Union home ministers P Chidambaram, Sushil Kumar Shinde and incumbent Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Prasad said he had countered these by challenging the ties of Saffron with Hindu mythology and tradition.
He also referred to the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter killing case, alleging that Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who was then a minister in Gujarat then, had been implicated in it based on the testimony of 'two sold-out witnesses' and had to spend months behind bars.
'Possibly for over a year (he remained in prison) and when he got bail, the Supreme Court made him dar-badar (translocated) from Gujarat… That judgment of the Supreme Court was wrong; I have examined it legally as per my experience – there was no evidence against Amit Shah,' he said.
'In the Ishrat Jahan case, the then-Union home secretary was pressured by Chidambaram sahab to not term her a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) agent in the government's affidavit when LeT itself had claimed that she had been one,' Prasad said, accusing the Congress of being willing 'to go to any extent for its votebank'.
'Chidambaram sir does not give certificates only to Pakistan,' he said, referring to the senior Congress leader's recent remarks on the terrorists involved in the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22. Chidambaram had said that 'there is no evidence' that the terrorists came from Pakistan.
'As home minister, he calculatedly raked up the issue of Saffron terror and sought to peddle a new narrative of conspiracy in the country, misusing the entire government machinery to implicate people in it… The BJP demands that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi apologise to the nation,' he alleged.
Jatin Anand is an Assistant Editor with The Indian Express. Over the last 15 years, he has covered bureaucracy & politics, crime, traffic & intelligence, the Election Commission of India & Urban Development among other beats. He is an English (Literature) graduate from Zakir Husain Delhi College, DU & specialised in Print at the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), Chennai. He tweets @jatinpaul ... Read More
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