Cong orchestrated false narrative 'bhagwa aatankwad' for vote-bank politics, says BJP

New Delhi, July 31 (IANS) Following the acquittal of all seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, senior BJP leader and Member of Parliament Ravi Shankar Prasad launched a scathing attack on the Congress party and former Home Minister P. Chidambaram, accusing them of pushing a “false narrative” of saffron terror for political gains.

Addressing a press conference in Delhi on Thursday, Prasad said, “The Congress party, for the sake of vote-bank politics, can go to any extent. On behalf of the BJP, we would like to say that the Congress party orchestrated a false narrative called 'bhagwa aatankwad'.”

He further claimed that Chidambaram, as then Home Minister, deliberately propagated the idea of saffron terror as part of a larger strategy. Talking about the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, Prasad claimed that the top officials in the Home Ministry were pressured to modify official affidavits.

“In the Ishrat Jahan case, then Home Secretary G.K. Pillai was pressured by Chidambaram not to mention in the affidavit that Ishrat Jahan was an agent of Lashkar-e-Taiba, even though LeT itself had claimed her as a martyr,” he said.

Referring to another senior official, he added, “There was a Home Ministry official named R.V.S. Mani who also faced pressure during the affidavit filing process. He was consistently being pressurised to change the affidavit in this case, and even Chidambaram, who was Home Minister then, forced him to change it.”

Referring to Chidambaram’s recent remarks questioning the nationality of the Pahalgam attackers, Prasad 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.”

He welcomed the court’s verdict, which stated that there was no evidence against the accused and that key witnesses had testified about being tortured. “The judgment has exposed the misuse of state machinery,” Prasad noted.

--IANS

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