Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi on Saturday lashed out at BJP’s candidiate for the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat Pragya Singh Thakur for her comments that Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse, was a patriot.

The child rights activist took to Twitter to warn the country that comments by people like Pragya Thakur, an accused in the Malegaon blasts, were “killing the soul of Indial”.

“Godse had killed Gandhi’s body, but people like Pragya are killing the soul, non-violence, peace, tolerance and the soul of India. Gandhi is above all power and politics. The BJP leadership must overcome the temptations for small gains and immediately remove them from the party and follow raj dharma,” Satyarthi tweeted in Hindi.

Pragya Thakur ‘s comment came as a riposte to actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan remark that “Godse, the first extremist of independent India, was a Hindu”.

Her comments triggered a firestorm of condemnation, forcing her to eventually apologise. On Friday, BJP president Amit Shah asked Pragya Thakur for an explanation within 10 days.

Union minister Ananth Kumar Hegde, and Nalin Kumar Kateel, a BJP MP from Karnataka have also been similar served show cause notices.

Kateel had compared Godse with former prime minister Rajiv Gandh while Hegde had tweeted “seven decades later, the condemned were being heard”.

First Published: May 18, 2019 12:48 IST