Affable Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Monday set tongues wagging as he stretched the grammar of honorifics a bit too far in Parliament while referring to the mastermind of the bloody Mumbai terror strike as ‘Mr’ and ‘Shri’ Hafiz Saeed.
Making a statement on the just concluded visit of Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik, Shinde prefixed with ‘Mr’ and ‘Shri’ to the name of banned Lashkar-e-toiba founder Hafiz Saeed, wanted by India in the Mumbai attack of 2008 that left more than 160 dead and about 300 injured.
Deputy leader of the House in Rajya Sabha and BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad disapproved the home minister being so respectful to the leader of a blacklisted terrorist outfit.
However, in the written statement tabled in the House, the mastermind has been mentioned as merely "one Hafiz Saeed".
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