The Congress on Tuesday questioned the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah on the alleged links of two arrested terrorists with the ruling party. Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera alleged the BJP was indulging in "fake nationalism", remarks coming in the backdrop of alleged links of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal's killer Riyaz Attari and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist Talib Hussain Shah with the BJP.
At the AICC Press conference, Khera said two incidents in the past week have exposed the "double-faced" BJP, after Attari and Shah, who was captured by villagers in Jammu and Kashmir's Reasi district, were claimed to be associated with the Centre's ruling party. Their photographs with BJP leaders have gone viral on social media.
Khera also asked how Talib Hussain Shah, who was allegedly planning to attack the Amarnath Yatra in Kashmir, was seen in a photograph with Amit Shah. He wondered whether it was not a security breach. A photograph tweeted by the Congress' Jammu and Kashmir unit showed a bearded man standing among people at a meeting attended by Amit Shah which some claimed was Talib, the alleged mastermind of serial bomb blasts in Rajouri.
"It is shocking that the BJP, a party that loses no opportunity to preach to Indians about nationalism, has members and office-bearers who are deeply implicated in violent anti-national activities," Khera said.
Jammu and Kashmir police chief Dilbag Singh had said on Monday Talib Hussain Shah was briefly associated with a political party and also posed himself as a mediaperson. The BJP had denied claims that the arrested LeT terrorist was its member.
Party J-K spokesperson Abhinav Sharma had claimed on Monday that Talib Hussain Shah had visited the party headquarters while posing as a reporter of a news portal to conduct recce at the behest of his handlers across the border to target the BJP leadership. He had also rejected claims that Shah was the minority cell's IT in-charge in J-K.
Khera claimed the NIA had confirmed former BJP leader and ex-sarpanch Tariq Ahmad Mir's association with terrorists. Mir, arrested two years ago for allegedly procuring weapons for Hizbul Mujahideen commander Naveed Babu, was claimed to be an associate of Dy SP Davinder Singh.
Naveed Babu had previously been arrested with Davinder Singh who had himself been accused of supplying weapons to terrorists, he said.
The truth would have come out had the probe in the Davinder Singh case been carried to its conclusion but was halted midway, the Congress spokesperson alleged. "Will the prime minister open his mouth? Will the home minister come out and give a clarification to the country? What were these terrorists doing in the BJP? What were you doing with those terrorists in the BJP?" he asked.