The Congress on Tuesday appealed to the people of India to see through the BJP’s “fake nationalism” in the context of the ruling party’s alleged association with terrorists, and questioned the silence of the Prime Minister and the home minister on the issue.
Hoardings were on Tuesday put up across Delhi showing pictures of those recently arrested on terror charges in the purported company of BJP leaders, and asking: “Is this BJP’s nationalism or terrorism?” Sources said the Youth Congress had installed the hoardings, but officially the Congress did not associate itself with them.
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera held a media conference where he spoke about the alleged links of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal’s killer Riyaz Attari and Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist Talib Hussain Shah with the BJP, and accused the party of showing a “disturbing willingness to flirt with anti-national forces”.
“Two incidents in the past week have exposed the two-faced BJP. First, we learned that one of the accused in Kanhaiya Lal’s horrific murder in Udaipur was a BJP worker. Then it emerged that a captured Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist in Jammu and Kashmir was not only a BJP office-bearer but was planning to launch attacks on the Amarnath Yatra,” Khera said.
The Congress spokesperson added: “We appeal to the people of India to see through the BJP’s fake nationalism and its disturbing willingness to flirt with anti-national forces.”
The Congress’s Rajasthan unit president, Govind Dotasara, has written to the National Investigation Agency chief urging him to investigate the alleged association of Attari with the BJP in the light of photographs emerging on social media purporting to show him in the company of BJP leaders.
Dotasara had said Attari joined the BJP in November 2019. The BJP has denied any association with Attari, who has been arrested along with Ghous Mohammed for slitting Lal’s throat and filming the crime.
The Congress has tweeted a picture resembling Union home minister Amit Shah with a group of people, with the face of one of them behind the politician circled. Social media users have speculated this person to be Hussain, who was arrested on Sunday in Jammu on the charge of being a Lashkar “commander” and the mastermind of several blasts in Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP had acknowledged that Hussain was associated with the party at least till May this year. However, neither Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor Union home minister Amit Shah has commented publicly on the alleged association of extremists with their party.
Khera said the BJP ceaselessly preached Indians on nationalism but maintained relations with anti-national forces, pointing out that the latest revelations were not the only evidence available in the public domain.
“Former BJP leader and ex-sarpanch Tariq Ahmad Mir was arrested (in Kashmir) two years ago for procuring weapons for Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Naveed Babu. Naveed Babu had previously been arrested with DSP Davinder Singh who had himself been accused of supplying weapons to terrorists,” the Congress spokesperson said.
Khera added: “The National Investigation Agency has confirmed that Mir is an associate of Davinder Singh. The truth would have come out had the Davinder Singh inquiry been carried through to its conclusion, but it was halted midway. We still don’t have answers on why Davinder Singh was allowed to go scot-free? Why did Jammu and Kashmir lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha write in that dismissal order that it is in national interest that he (Singh) may not be investigated further? Whose interest was being served here? We lost 40 of our bravehearts in the Pulwama attack. We cannot allow facts about Davinder Singh’s dismissal without any punishment to go unaddressed.”
The Congress had earlier too questioned if Singh had links with the 2019 Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF soldiers died. Months after the strike, Singh was arrested in January 2020 for allegedly ferrying Hizb commander Babu and his associate in the officer’s vehicle.
The dismissal order signed by lieutenant governor Sinha on May 20 last year said he was satisfied “that the activities of Mr Davinder Singh, DSP Pulwama, are such as to warrant his dismissal”. However, the order also said the Lt Governor was “satisfied that in the interest of the security of state, it is not expedient to hold an enquiry in the case of Mr Davinder Singh”.
Giving other examples of the BJP’s purported links with anti-national elements, Khera said on Tuesday: “In 2017, the Madhya Pradesh anti-terrorism squad arrested BJP IT cell member Dhruv Saxena along with 10 accomplices for spying for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.They had set up an illegal telephone exchange that allowed their handlers in Pakistan to impersonate Indian Army officials and collect national security information. A picture of Saxena with Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan also went viral.”
The Congress spokesperson added: “Two years later, Balram Singh, a Bajrang Dal leader from Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in a terror funding case. In 2017, a special court of the NIA sentenced Assam BJP leader Niranjan Hojai to life imprisonment for participating in a Rs 1,000-crore scam to divert government funds to support a militant group.
“The BJP also knowingly gave a ticket to (Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed chief) Masood Azhar’s acolyte Mohammad Farooq Khan to contest the Srinagar municipal election (in 2018) from ward 33. Khan was previously a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.”
Wondering what kind of an ideology finds space for both Nupur Sharma and Riyaz Attari in the BJP, Khera said: “They can also accommodate terrorists like Talib Hussain? Is the BJP inspired by the alliance between the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League in which extremists of all religions banded together to prevent nationalist forces like the Congress to come to power? Will the Prime Minister open his mouth? Will the home minister come out and give a clarification to the country? How many such fringe elements do you need to keep the BJP in the mainstream?”
