New Delhi:
The BJP on Tuesday asked AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal to clarify if his party has any connection with those allegedly involved in sending bomb threats to more than 400 schools in Delhi recently.
This came after Delhi Police claimed that a Class-12 student had sent hoax bomb threats to more than 400 city schools and that his parents are linked to an NGO that supports a political party. The police, however, did not reveal the name of the political party.
A police officer also said that during the investigation, it was found that the NGO had voiced support for Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Hitting back, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) accused the BJP of “concocting stories” ahead of Assembly polls and asserted that “no evidence has so far come from the police”.
Terming the police findings as “very sensitive and serious”, BJP national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi claimed it has also been found during the probe that the student’s parents were associated with some NGOs that were involved in the past in such activities considered inimical to national security.
“This news raises strong suspicion because we all know that AAP has deep links to such unwanted NGOs and others involved in anti-national activities,” he told a press conference at the BJP headquarters here.
Stressing that it was not something pulled out of thin air, Mr Trivedi said, “Chief Minister Atishi Marlena’s parents had supported Afzal Guru’s clemency petition. AAP (government) kept the file of the case on the raising of ‘tukde-tukde’ slogan (in JNU campus) pending (for sanction of prosecution of the accused) for months,” he alleged.
The BJP leader claimed that there appeared to be a “direct link” between the NGOs and the AAP leadership in the case related to bomb threats sent to schools in Delhi.
“Kejriwal talks all nonsense and makes false statements. I want to ask clearly if AAP will clarify what its links are to the horrifying and dangerous facts coming out because a direct ideological similarity with you is visible with the mechanism coming to light in the case,” he said.
The BJP’s Delhi unit chief Virendra Sachdeva also targeted AAP on the issue and claimed that given the direction of the investigation in the case, the “links between the said NGO, AAP and its leaders will become visible somewhere or the other”.
“It’s not a coincidence…Those emails were sent to 400 schools under a well-thought-out conspiracy so that an atmosphere of fear is created in Delhi because they had to win the elections,” he charged.
“Arvind Kejriwal is not just an enemy of Delhi but of the country as well… May Delhi be free from this ‘aapda’ (disaster) because they (AAP) have destroyed Delhi,” he added.
AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh mocked Trivedi over his allegations, calling him the “newly appointed Delhi Police Commissioner”.
“He knows things that even the police is unaware of,” the AAP leader said at a press conference.
Mr Singh also asked why the BJP is raising the issue eight months after the first bomb threat was received by a school in the city in May last year.
“No evidence has so far come from the police, while the BJP for political gain has now raised the issue and Trivedi is concocting baseless stories when the Delhi Assembly elections are hardly 15 days away,” the AAP leader said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
