Outside the Nampally court during the Mecca blast case hearing in Hyderabad Monday. (PTI Photo)
A war of words erupted between the BJP and the Congress after a NIA special court acquitted right-wing activist Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case Monday. While the BJP said the opposition party’s “appeasement politics” of “defaming” Hindus stood exposed, the Congress retorted claiming people no longer had any faith in the investigating agencies as they had become “rubber stamps of the government.”
Senior Congress leader P L Punia told reporters that neither the party nor its president Rahul Gandhi had used the words “saffron terror” hours after the BJP sought Congress’s apology for using the terms. “Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party has never used the words saffron terror.. It is mere rubbish. There is nothing called saffron terror. It is our clear belief that terror cannot be linked to any religion or any community or caste,” Punia said.
Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, questioned the functioning of the NIA. “How the NIA is functioning today, how the investigating agencies are working in the BJP government, the entire world knows…what they are doing and at whose instance…People don’t have any faith in these agencies. Because these agencies have become rubber stamps of the government,” he said.