India TV Editor-in-Chief Rajat Sharma
Eleven years after the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad, the Special NIA Court on Monday acquitted Swami Aseemanand and four other accused, with the judge saying that the investigation agency failed to prove any of the charges.
This has brought to the fore the issue of 'saffron terror' coined by the then UPA ministers P. Chidambaram and Sushil Kumar Shinde. Both Chidambaram and Shinde, who are senior Congress leaders, had claimed that they had documentary evidence in several terror related cases, and got affidavits filed in court changed to support their charge of "saffron terror". At one point of time, during the UPA rule, an impression was created as if some radical Hindu outfits played a role in the Malegaon blasts, Ajmer shrine blast and Mecca Masjid blast.
The latest court verdict along with some other recent verdicts make it amply clear that genuine documents were removed from files and fake affidavits were filed to bolster the charge of "saffron terror". This brought a bad name to India in the international arena. Even Rahul Gandhi went to the US and spoke of "saffron terror" being more dangerous than the ISIS.
Now that the accused are being acquitted in most of the terror related cases, the Congress cannot absolve itself by saying that since the BJP is in power, the judiciary has given such verdicts. Had it been so, all the accused in the 2G scam, in which UPA leaders were accused, would not have been acquitted. One should respect the verdict of the courts.
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