Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis attacked Congress over the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case verdict, which was given by the special NIA court, acquitting all the accused, including BJP leader and former MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit on Thursday, July 31.
While speaking to the media in Mumbai, Fadnavis criticised the then Congress-led UPA government for creating a conspiracy and setting the narrative of saffron and Hindu terrorism, by creating the entire Malegaon case. "The way the Congress-led UPA government conspired to set the narrative of saffron terrorism, Hindu terrorism and prepared the entire Malegaon case, today it has been exposed," Fadnavis said.
CM Fadnavis alleged that the Congress created a narrative in the Malegaon case to please its vote bank, as the majority of voters in the region are a minority. "The work done by Congress to label all Hindus as terrorists, today, the whole country is condemning it. We demand that Congress apologise for calling out terms like Hindu terrorism and saffron terrorism..."
Fadnavis said that we will study the verdict in detail, but after the hearing, the case "clearly show that this was a conspiracy."
Also Read | 2008 Malegaon Bomb Blast Case Verdict: All Accused, Including Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Acquitted by NIA Court.
After the Malegaon Blast case verdict, Maharashtra CM took to X (formerly Twitter) to praise the NIA special court hearing in the case and said the verdict vindicates those who were wrongly targeted and erases the "false stigma" against the Hindu community. "Terrorism was never saffron, is not, and will never be!," Fadnavis wrote in Hindi on X.
The blast, which took place near the mosque in Malegaon, Nashik district on September 23, 2008, had killed six and injured over 100 people. Accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur's lawyer said, "After the struggle of 17 years, it has been proven that nothing like saffron terrorism exists. Congress wrongly implicated people in this saffron terrorism case just before the 2009 Lok Sabha elections... Yesterday, the Union Home Minister also said that a Hindu cannot be a terrorist."