BJP backs blast suspect, calls it a 'sponsered' case

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday alleged that the investigation into the involvement of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in the Malegaon and Modasa blasts was not transparent.

“The nation is entitled to know the evidence against Pragya; (Otherwise) we'll be forced to infer that the investigation is not transparent and it could be sponsored," national BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters in Delhi.

Thakur and two of her associates were arrested October 24 by Mumbai Police for their suspected involvement in the near-simultaneous low-intensity bomb blasts in Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat on the night of Sep 29. Six people -- five in Malegaon and one in Modasa, were killed in these blasts.

Since then, Pragya has been subjected to narco test by the Gujarat police and polygraph test by the Maharashtra police.

Prasad said there was “no credible evidence against Pragya”.

He said the investigation reports submitted by Anti-Terror Squad, Mumbai, of the 2006 Malegaon bomb blast suggested that the accused were members of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

“Why this lead has not been followed in the 2008 blast?” Prasad asked.

Questions were raised against the BJP also on why the party has always referred to Pragya as an accused but immediately declared the Muslim boys caught at Batla House in Jamia Nagar in Delhi as terrorists.

Asked why his party referred to Pragya only as an accused while it was quick to call the Muslim boys arrested in the Batla House gunbattle as terrorists, he said, “We must remember that the police traced their links to the Jaipur and Ahmedabad blasts."

He added, "Can we also deny that a brave police officer lost his life in the Batla House encounter?”

There was a shootout in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, Sep 19 in which two alleged terrorists were killed and inspector Mohan Chand Sharma lost his life.

The police had traced links of the youth to the militant group Indian Mujahideen, which took responsibility for the September 13 serial bomb blasts in Delhi.