RSS leader Indresh Kumar demanded an apology from Congress leaders after a witness in the 2008 Malegoan blast case claimed in a court on Tuesday that the ATS had threatened him to take the names of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and four other RSS leaders.
Kumar demanded an apology from Congress leaders - former prime minister Manmohan Singh, party chief Sonia Gandhi, former Home Minister P Chidambaram, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Digvijay Singh and Salman Khurshid - for "assassinating the character of BJP and RSS leaders".
Also Read | Malegaon Blast: Witness Claims ATS Forced Him To Take Names Of Adityanath, RSS Leaders
Notably, former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh, currently facing multiple cases of extortion, was posted as additional commissioner of the ATS, when it probed the Malegaon blast case.
" It has proved that all the cases of saffron terror (lodged) at that time were a conspiracy hatched by the Congress as part of its dirty politics," the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader told PTI.
He also slammed the other opposition parties that were standing with the Congress in the Malegaon blast trials. He said that it was "dirty politics and conspiracy to falsely implicate the BJP and the RSS leaders" in the saffron terror cases.
"It is the height of their shamelessness that they (Congress leaders) have not yet even apologised for hatching such a political conspiracy intended to commit atrocities (on the BJP and RSS leaders)," he said.
On September 29, 2008, six people were killed and over 100 injured when an explosive device strapped on a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Nashik's Malegaon town, located about 200 km from Mumbai.
The accused in the case include Lok Sabha member Pragya Singh Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, Shudakar Diwedi, Major Ramesh Upadhyay (retired), Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sameer Kulkarni, all of whom are out on bail.