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Muslims object to Chidambaram’s remark on Jaipur serial blasts

Special Correspondent

Advise him to restrain himself until the allegations are proved

“Observations premature and unwarranted”
“Gehlot too concurred with these observations”

JAIPUR: Muslim groups in Rajasthan have taken strong exception to Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram declaring here earlier this week that the May 13, 2008 Jaipur serial blasts case has been solved. They have advised him to restrain himself until the charges framed and evidence collected by the police are proved in the court.

Mr. Chidambaram had claimed during his visit to review the internal security situation here this past Tuesday that the blasts case stood resolved with the arrest of three persons and the trial in the court would start at the earliest.

He also sought to link the case with the controversial Batla House encounter in Delhi on September 19 last year. The Rajasthan Muslim Forum — an apex organisation of Muslim groups in the State — described Mr. Chidambaram’s observations as “premature, preposterous and unwarranted” and charged that his “boastful claim” was aimed at exploiting the majority community’s sentiments in the run-up to the coming Lok Sabha elections. “It is shocking that the newly installed Congress-led government in Rajasthan has given an open approval to the investigations into the blasts by the State police to serve the communal agenda of the ousted BJP regime and has not made any effort to review the probe,” said Muslim Forum convener Qari Moinuddin in a statement on Saturday.

Scepticism

The Muslim Forum expressed scepticism over Mr. Chidambaram’s claim that the two “terrorists” killed in the Batla House encounter were part of the terror group that executed the Jaipur blasts in which 70 people were killed. “The Batla House episode itself is shrouded in mystery and has raised a number of unanswered questions, while the UPA government at the Centre has rejected the demand for a high-level judicial inquiry into it,” said the orum.

The Muslim groups affirmed that the real culprits of the terror attacks in Jaipur as well as at the Ajmer dargah on October 11, 2007, were still at large and lamented that innocent Muslim youngsters — mostly from Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh — had been jailed under “concocted charges.”

The Muslim leaders regretted that even Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had concurred with Mr. Chidambaram’s observations and made a similar claim about “success of the State police” at a meeting of Chief Ministers on internal security in Delhi recently.

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