* The editorial, ‘Take no prisoners’ rightly assessed that “Advani has sacrificed good sense and national interest to short-term ambition”. The prime ministerial candidate of the opposition has indeed painted “himself into a corner if Thakur and Purohit are, in the end, proved to be guilty and by smearing our law and order mechanisms as politically pliable, he could inflict deep injury on the credibility of these institutions.” Actually, ever since the probe into the Malegaon blasts linked the suspects to Hindu terrorist outfits, the BJP has gone on the offensive because it feels nervous and disoriented, not knowing which way to turn.

—B.K. Chatterjee, Faridabad

* Several counter-terrorism experts and commentators have disapproved of the Maharashtra Police’s reprehensible resort to a public trial of the blast suspects through selective leaks to an obliging and unquestioning media. The relentless media campaign against the so-called “Hindu terror network” seemed designed to mark the detained suspects like Sadhvi Pragya and Lt-Col Purohit guilty even before a trial.

—M. Ratan, New Delhi

Heed the law

* This refers to your editorial ‘The offence of defence’. Being the president of a national political party, Rajnath Singh is not supposed to issue a clean chit to those accused of terrorism simply because they belong to a community the BJP professes to be the sole custodian of. Even if the BJP’s political adversaries were to make scapegoats of the accused, the party ought to stay aloof from them.

—Hemant Kumar, Ambala

... contd.