National

Posers to BJP on hijack issue, Purulia armsdrop case

NEW DELHI: What was L.K. Advani, then Home Minister, doing when the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was on the tarmac at the airport in Amritsar for a whole hour? Why was the plane not stopped? Why was Peter Bleach, sentenced to life in the Purulia armsdrop case, along with five convicted Latvians, allowed to walk away?

Why was Afzal Guru, convicted in the Parliament attack case, allowed to walk away when he was caught some time before the attack on Parliament? What about Chattisinghpora, where innocent villagers were killed, claiming terrorists who had attacked had been downed?

The questions came thick and fast from journalists at a press conference addressed by Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad as he tried to defend the former Home Minister and respond to an attack on him by the Congress here on Friday.

When Mr. Prasad talked about the Manmohan Singh government’s “failure” to hang Afzal Guru, given the death sentence by the Supreme Court, reporters asked Mr. Prasad whether it was true that the man was caught during the NDA regime and allowed to walk away before the attack on Parliament.

Mr. Prasad said that Afzal Guru was indeed caught in 2001 “by the Jammu and Kashmir police” and “not by the NDA government at the Centre.” When it was pointed out that the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister’s party was an ally of the NDA and his son Omar Abdullah, a minister in the Vajpayee government, Mr. Prasad had nothing much to say.

He was also asked why the NDA had kept the death sentences against the assassins of Rajiv Gandhi pending for six years? Mr. Prasad said “that was a different matter. You should ask the UPA, which has been in power for four years, why it has not gone ahead with the hanging.” In his view, keeping those death sentences pending was not being soft on terror, but not hanging Guru was.

On the Purulia armsdrop case, Mr. Prasad explained away the decision of the Vajpayee government to allow five Latvians and the British national, Peter Bleach, to go back to their countries by saying “it was a matter of international relations.”

Mr. Prasad could not respond when asked why the only terrorist attack on the Amarnath pilgrims took place during the NDA regime. He first claimed that the militants were killed. But journalists pointed out that they had lobbed deadly grenades and vanished.

As for the Kandahar hijacking case, the BJP came out with the plea of “passengers’ lives on the line” for releasing three hardcore terrorists, with the former External Affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh, personally escorting them to their freedom. Despite repeated queries why the plane was allowed to leave Amritsar, Mr. Prasad said “we did not allow it to refuel.”