By PTI
GUWAHATI: Congress MP Ranjeet Ranjan on Saturday accused the ruling BJP of maintaining ‘close links’ with individuals caught in terror activities, including in Assam.
She maintained that while the BJP loses no opportunity to preach nationalism to Indians, the association with such individuals has led Congress to question the saffron party.
“The Congress does not believe in playing politics over serious national issues like terrorism,” Ranjan said, addressing a press conference here.
“However multiple revelations of close links between the BJP and individuals caught in terror activities force us to ask some straight questions of a ruling party that loses no opportunity to preach to Indians about nationalism,” the Rajya Sabha member added.
She pointed that militant-turned-politician Niranjan Hojai is currently a BJP leader in the state, even though he was convicted by an NIA court in 2017 in a case relating to diverting government money to fund terror activities.
Ranjan said there were numerous such individuals linked with the saffron party, including the most-recent instance of a BJP worker Mohammad Riyaz Attari turning out to be one of the accused in the Kanhaiya Lal murder in Udaipur.
“He had joined the BJP in the presence of a senior local leader. Media reports state that Attari was employed by the son-in-law of the BJP’s Leader of the Opposition in the Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha, Gulab Chand Kataria,” she claimed.
A Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Talib Hussain Shah, who had been captured by locals, was revealed to be a BJP office-bearer in Jammu and Kashmir, she pointed out.
When arrested, he had been planning attacks on the Amarnath Yatra, the Congress leader claimed.
“In 2017, the Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad arrested the BJP IT Cell member Dhruv Saxena along with 10 accomplices for spying for the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. The spy ring had set up an illegal telephone exchange to facilitate espionage,” Ranjan said.
Two years later Balram Singh, a Bajrang Dal leader from Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in a terror funding case, she added.
The Congress leader also accused the BJP of knowingly giving a ticket to Masood Azhar’s acolyte Mohammad Farooq Khan to contest the Srinagar municipal election.
She also pointed out that dreaded terrorist Masood Azhar who was released by the BJP-led government in 1999 during the Kandahar hijacking.
Azhar went on to find the Jaish-e-Muhammad terror group that was responsible for the 2001 Parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
“The Jaish also masterminded for the 2019 Pulwama attack in which 44 CRPF personnel died after 200 kg of high explosive including RDX somehow made its way past multiple security checkpoints. Why an inquiry into Pulwama has not been held remains a mystery,” the Congress leader querried.