Shah targets Congress for giving a ‘clean chit’ to Lashkar in Samjhauta blast
Shah’s tirade came two days after Union finance minister Arun Jaitley accused the Congress of defaming Hindus using the Samjhauta train blast case.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Sunday accused the Congress of giving a clean chit to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba in the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast case and “putting a tag of terrorism on Hindus”.
Speaking at his first election meeting in western Uttar Pradesh, Shah said in “the Samjhauta blast case, the then Union home minister P Chidambaram, Sushilkumar Shinde [senior Congress leader] and Rahul Gandhi [now the Congress president] had said before US officials that Lashkar is not a threat, but people spreading Hindu terrorism are”.
On March 20, a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court acquitted Naba Kumar Sarkar, alias Aseemanand, and three other accused in the Samjhauta Express blast case that killed 68 people.
“However, the court has given a clean chit to Swami Aseemanand and other accused persons,” Shah said, accusing the Congress of sending Aseemanand and other “innocent persons” to jail.
Shah alleged that the Congress had committed the sin of linking terrorism with religion and demanded that Gandhi should apologise to the country.
“They have committed the sin of insulting the glorious Hindu community for their vote bank politics. Can a Hindu ever be a terrorist? It is possible that Rahul Gandhi does not know that we (Hindus) even feed wheat flour to ants? How can we kill people?” the BJP chief asked.
Shah’s tirade came two days after Union finance minister Arun Jaitley accused the Congress of defaming Hindus using the Samjhauta train blast case.
Zeeshan Haider, a Congress spokesperson in Uttar Pradesh, said: “For the Congress, terrorism is terrorism. There is no Hindu terrorism or Muslim terrorism. Rahul Gandhi ji never said what Amit Shah is asking him to seek apology for.”