Mumbai:
The BJP has approached the Election Commission, seeking action against Congress and its Maharashtra leader Vijay Wadettiwar for his comment that police officer Hemant Karkare was not killed by Ajmal Kasab and Ujjwal Nikam had suppressed facts about this in court. His statement, the BJP alleged, undermines national security by playing the communal card.
“Nikam is not a lawyer, but a traitor. Karkare was not killed by bullets of terrorists like Ajmal Kasab, but by the bullet of a cop close to the Sangh. Nikam suppressed this evidence before the special court to save the officer,” Mr Wadettiwar had apparently claimed on a television channel.
His statement, the BJP said on its complaint, “not only contradicts the established facts adjudicated by the Judiciary but also undermines national security by conflating it with communal issues, clearly intended to incite communal tension”.
“This act of spreading false narratives is particularly egregious given the sensitive nature of the events discussed and the positions Mr Wadettiwar has held,” the BJP alleged, pointing out that he had bnever made such claims during his tenure as a minister of the state.
The Congress, the party added, has not distanced itself from these remarks and appears to “tacitly support this narrative”. The Commission, it added, should investigate both Congress and its leader for supporting and propagating this harmful narrative.
Hemant Karkare and another senior police officer, Ashok Kamte, were killed outside south Mumbai’s Cama Hospital when Ajmal Kasab and his partner Abu Ismail opened fire at their police van.
Of the ten Pakistani terrorists who attacked Mumbai in 2008 and killed 166 people, Ajmal Kasab was the only one to be caught alive. He was placed in a Mumbai jail for nearly four years and hanged in Pune in November 2012.
