BJP chief backs Sadhvi: ‘there’s no evidence’

Asked about the other arrests in the case, including those of two alleged accomplices of Sadhvi and a retired Army major, he said: “I am not aware of any arrests other than Pragya’s. Anyone who believes in the ideology of cultural nationalism cannot ever be a terrorist.”

Although Rajnath’s remarks are echoed by several BJP leaders in private conversations, these mark a departure from the official calibrated reaction of the party and the Sangh Parivar ever since the arrests — first reported in The Indian Express — by the Maharashtra Police.

Their refrain so far has been that the law “should take its course” and that “terror has no religion.” Many other Sangh leaders have denied any knowledge of her association with the party although her father has claimed that Pragya — a former member of the national executive of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the RSS students’ wing — campaigned for the BJP in the 2002 Gujarat Assembly elections.

But the BJP president is the first senior party leader to openly attack the case against her. Speaking to The Indian Express today, he said: “I don’t think that she is a terrorist. They didn’t find any material evidence against her despite the raids. Had they got even a shred of evidence against her, they would not have insisted on a narco test.” The court last week approved her narco and brain-mapping.

“We have always believed that there’s no link between religion and terror,” he said. “It’s the Congress that has linked the war on terror with one particular community, purely for vote-bank politics. I have spoken about jehadi terror but not Islamic terror.”

Fringe elements in Sangh Parivar are talking about “rallying support” for Pragya. Said Karnataka’s Pramod Muthalik, in the news lately for saying that he is raising an “armed suicide squad devoted to the nationalist cause”: “While this is a conspiracy by the Congress to implicate the Sangh Parivar ahead of several state Assembly elections, the Sadhvi’s arrest also shows that Hindu society can get even with the Islamic jehadis. The BJP should have stood by her and stressed on the conspiracy angle to fight the Congress.”

Bajrang Dal chief Prakash Sharma said that “policymakers should be worried if the Hindus were taking to arms because of the government’s skewed approach to war on terror”. Asked about reports that the Bajrang Dal was organising arms-training camps, he said: “We do this only to boost their morale. The country wouldn’t get its Abhinav Bindras if there were no armed training for the youth.”

Asked if he supported the Bajrang Dal camps that reportedly trained youth in handling arms, BJP president Rajnath Singh said: “I am not aware of any such activities.”

BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad, for the record, said today: “Should we condemn an entire religion or way of life for the alleged indiscretions or misguided actions of but a few? Will Prime Minister Manmohan Singh like to lose some sleep over this new pernicious tendency as he lost some when an alleged innocent doctor was arrested in Australia? The BJP deprecates Hindu bashing by pseudo-secularists and some segments of the media.”