Objective of blasts was to kill NaMo: Sushil Kumar
The BJP blasted the Nitish Kumar Government in Bihar for the serial blasts at Narendra Modi’s rally in Patna on Sunday and claimed there was a bid to assassinate the prime ministerial candidate of the Opposition party.
It claimed the approach of the State administration was “casual and callous” and said the very fact that such a large-scale infiltration of terrorists and explosives took place at the rally site showed glaring loopholes in security preparations.
“This is an attack on Narendra Modi and other senior BJP leaders. It was intended to intimidate our party, which has vowed with greater determination to fight these tendencies. The Centre should seriously review the security of Modi as he has been travelling to various parts of the country and ensure that no such incident is repeated in future,” senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley told reporters here.
Demanding a high-level enquiry, which should dispassionately look into the lapses, Jaitley claimed no anti-sabotage checks or rehearsal was undertaken in the required manner. “Frisking of participants who came to attend the rally at various entry points was not substantially undertaken,” he said.
In Patna, former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said: “We have come to the conclusion that the intention of the blasts was not to create a stampede or to target the public, but the prime objective was to kill Narendra Modi.”
Jaitley countered Nitish Kumar’s claim about the absence of Intelligence and claimed an alert was sounded by the Intelligence Bureau on October 1 with regard to the Indian Mujahideen (IM) planning to organize strikes in different cities.
“A specific alert was sent to the Bihar Police by the Central Intelligence Bureau on October 23 with regard to the rally to be addressed by Modi in Patna. The letter number of this alert was v-111/PA/2013 (3). This alert was specific enough to mention that the IM modules could organize strikes during Modi’s Patna visit. A reference to the arrest of Bhatkal, information emanating from another source was also mentioned,” Jaitley claimed.
The senior BJP leader said when he reached the venue of the rally at 12.10 pm, two officers of Gujarat Police took him aside and told him that it was not safe to continue the rally in view of the inadequate security measures.
They said that Advance Security liaison which is necessary when a Chief Minister of another State is visiting had not been carried out adequately.
“These two officers further informed me that blasts around and inside the venue of the rally had already taken place and it was not safe for the Chief Minister of Gujarat to leave the airport and reach the rally,” Jaitley claimed.
In the meantime, when BJP chief Rajnath Singh reached the dais another major blast took place inside Gandhi Maidan. Jaitley said he asked a woman police officer whether it was safe to continue with the rally and if there was any evacuation plan in place.
“She replied that she would speak to her senior, the SSP. Thereafter, no police officer of Bihar contacted us or spoke to us. We were thus left below the stage to decide the future course of action on our own,” Jaitley said.
The BJP leader claimed they were no security experts and used their common sense to avert a disaster, which could have been frightful. “If we have to thank somebody, we should thank our stars that there were no further explosions during Modi’s speech. We took a chance and things went the right way,” Jaitley said.