Released on bail after eight years in jail for her suspected role in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur on Thursday blamed the erstwhile UPA government for her confinement and alleged a “Congress conspiracy”.
“I am a victim of Congress's conspiracy, injustice has been done to be for nine years,” Sadhvi, who was arrested in October 2008, said.
Blaming the then Union Home Minister P Chidambaram for coining the term “saffron terror” after it came to light that the right-wing activists were allegedly involved in a string of terror attacks in the period, Sadhvi said a “vidharmi” (heretic) sees a problem with “bhagwa” (saffron).
Sadhvi Pragya, who is suffering from cancer, said she would now get a better treatment for her illness. She was undergoing treatment at a Madhya Pradesh hospital.
Sadhvi also lashed out at the Mumbai ATS for harassing her physically and mentally. “No woman in independent or pre-independent India would have been subjected to kind of mistreatment that I was by the Mumbai ATS. Such was the extent of the torture that I had to be kept on ventilator for five days in the hospital,” she alleged.
She further alleged that the ATS transferred her to Mumbai from Surat against rules and confined her illegally for 13 days.
While blaming the Congress government for her suffering, Sadhvi hailed the current BJP dispensation as a government committed to uphold justice.
Sadhvi, a key accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast in which six persons were killed and nearly 100 others injured, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on April 25, holding that prima facie no case was made out against her.
A bomb strapped to a motorcycle had exploded in Malegaon town of Nashik district, about 270 km from here, on September 29, 2008.
Sadhvi Pragya, 44 , was arrested in October that year and was charged with plotting the blasts as part of what the prosecution said a plan by Hindu right wing group Abhinav Bharat. She was in jail since their arrests.
Besides her, Lt Col Prasad Purohit and nine others were also arrested and are behind bars.
The NIA, which took over the probe from the ATS, had given a clean chit to Sadhvi Pragya and told the High Court that it had no objection if she was released on bail.
