Date:26/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/26/stories/2008112657070300.htm

New Delhi

“Sangh Parivar trying to derail investigations”

Neena Vyas

BJP fears details of RSS persons might surface: Congress

‘Prime ministerial aspirant L.K. Advani was thrown out as BJP president by RSS leaders’
‘It is not for political parties to decide how investigations should be carried out’

NEW DELHI: The Congress has charged the Bharatiya Janata Party and other sister organisations of the sangh parivar with deliberately trying to derail the investigations by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, perhaps because it feared that unsavoury details of involvement of some persons associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh might surface.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari made several charges against people associated with the sangh parivar organisations.

A plot to kill two RSS leaders had also surfaced, he said. Then why was the BJP continuing to defend the accused, he asked.

Mr. Tewari said it was well known that the BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant L.K. Advani was thrown out as BJP president by RSS leaders.

A couple of senior RSS leaders took a tough stand against him after his utterances in Pakistan that ‘Jinnah was secular’ [Mr. Advani had praised Jinnah’s secular vision of August 1947]. And now surfaced a plot of some people espousing the Hindutva cause wanting to eliminate some RSS leaders. The reason, Mr. Tewari said, the BJP continued to defend the Malegaon blast accused was it was afraid the investigations would unravel the dirty and dangerous war within the sangh.

He said the BJP’s behaviour exemplifies the adage, ‘Don’t hear the message, shout at the messenger.’

Almost from day one of the investigations, Mr. Tewari said, BJP president Rajnath Singh was alleging that the evidence was fabricated; the BJP declared that the terror investigation was politically motivated; and Mr. Advani alleged some of the accused were tortured by police when an affidavit of the accused was before the court, which had to take note of it.

Whether in the Jamia Nagar’s Batla House case or the Malegaon investigations, it was not for political parties to decide how investigations were to be carried out, who should or should not be prosecuted, and what section of the criminal law should be applied to which case, Mr. Tewari said.