JOIN USBJP signals return to hardline
Signalling its return to hardline agenda, the BJP on Tuesday came up with a structured critique of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe into the Samjhauta train blast which has chargesheeted Swami Aseemanand and other former RSS members for carrying out the terror strike.
Senior BJP leader M M Joshi told reporters that information was publicly available to point out Pakistan-based terrorist outfits’ involvement in the train blasts which “destroys the case in NIA chargesheet and confirms the evil intent of the political establishment”.
Though the first chargesheet was filed way back on June 20, 2011, the BJP is now questioning the NIA probe in a terror module comprising of Hindus that carried out other attacks on Muslim places of worship such as at Ajmer shrine and in Malegaon. The NIA has claimed that they have rounded up planners of the train attack, apart from the conspirators who included slain Sunil Joshi.
Tuesday’s briefing of the BJP follows a similar long article by RSS ideologue S Gurumuthy who wrote in an English daily on January 23. Titled “Samjhauta Blast Case: Counter Investigation to NIA Investigation… NIA suppresses evidence against LeT, Arif Qasmani, David Headley and Pakistan and fabricates chargesheet to fix Indians to create notion of Hindu terror”, Gurumurthy argued that the investigators relied on a retracted confessional statement of Swami Assemanad to create a case of Hindu terror to please their political masters.
Similarly, Joshi also said that “the resolution of the Committee on sanctions of the United Nations Security Council (in June 2009) and the public declaration of the US Treasury Department (in July 2009) establish that Arif Qasmani, the chief coordinator of LeT, had funded the Samjhauta blast with the al-Qaeda providing the staff for the blast”.
“It also brings out that Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Mallik has said that (in January 2010) Pakistani terrorists were hired for the blast. It also brings out that the confession of Faiza Outalha, the third of wife of David Coleman Headley (in 2008, made public in 2010) that Headley was involved in the Samjhauta blast and she was also innocently involved (Paras 21-26); and also the SIMI leaders’ testimony under narco effect (in 2007 made public in 2008) that they had provided support for the Pakistanis involved in the attack,” the veteran BJP leader told reporters.
He charged that the NIA “suppressed” all these information available in public domain pointing to the role of people other than those arrested in the case. “And the evidence thus brought out virtually demolishes the NIA chargesheet in the Samjhauta blast case,” Joshi alleged.