From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: In a sensational claim, the Congress on Saturday alleged that one of the two assassins first nabbed in the murder of trader Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur early this week belonged to the Bharatiya Janata Praty (BJP) and so the Centre rushed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) team to cover up his links with the BJP and give it a twist of a terror case with Pakistani links.
Congress spokesman Pawan Khera told a Press conference here that the prime accused Riyaz Atari was an active member of the BJP and he was very close to several BJP leaders, circulating his photographs of attending the BJP’s minority unit of Rajasthan.
The BJP denied any link with the Udaipur killing accused after the Congress flagged the killers’ pictures with the BJP’s minority wing chief of Rajasthan on the social media. Rajasthan BJP minority morcha president Mohd Sadiq Khan, whose photo with assassin Atari was released, asserted that the photograph cannot be held as a proof to show he is a party member.
“He might have gone to some programme of the party to carry out a recce and got photos clicked with local leaders. Since it is a normal trend to upload photos with leaders or celebrities on Facebook and other social media platforms, he might have also uploaded the photo but it does not mean that he is a BJP member,” Sadiq asserted.
Khera also released photographs of Riyaz Atari along with two BJP leaders Irshad Chainwala and Mohd Tahir and said Riyaz was very close to the BJP’s former home minister Gulabchand Kataria and could be seen his programmes quite often.
He also released the Facebook post of Chainwala on November 30, 2018 and the Facebook posts of Mohd Tahir on February 3, 2019, 27 October 2019, 20 November 2019 and 10 August 2021 in support of his allegation.
He shot off three questions based on the revelation of the identity of the assassins:
— Is the BJP and its leaders are trying to create a climate of the religious frenzy?
— Will the PM and Home Minister Amit Shah still maintain silence of the BJP leaders creating this frenzy? and
— Is BJP trying to set the nation on fire through its leaders and spokespersons for political advantage of the “dhruvikaran” (polarisation)?
