Digvijaya Singh on Friday charged that the latest forensic report, which said the meat recovered from the house of Dadri lynching victim Mohammad Akhlaq was beef, was ‘manipulated.’
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event here, Mr. Singh recalled that the first forensic test had said that it was not beef. Now, a year later, another test report had said it was beef. “It’s 100 per cent case of manipulation,'” he said.
He charged that it was the fundamentalist strategy of the Bharatiya Janata Party to polarise votes on religious lines ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections.
In September last year, Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched by a mob of fanatics on suspicion that he and his family members stored beef.
Replying to a question on the Gulbarg Society case, Mr. Singh said that in the cases relating to the 2002 riots, “we had a situation where prosecution and defence were on the same side.” “It’s a fact that the Special Investigation Team and the courts have held that it was the handiwork of the Rashtriya Swawamsevak Sangh and the Bajrang Dal activists. But no evidence was found against BJP leaders. How could they if the defence and the prosecution were on the same side?'' he asked.
Coming down heavily on the National Investigation Agency for giving a clean chit to Pakistan in the Pathankot Airbase terror attack case, Mr. Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval must tell who had attacked the airbase if not Pakistani terrorists. He described the handling of the Pathankot terror case as not just a failure of diplomacy, but monumental failure of internal security apparatus as well. He demanded that the three — the Prime Minister, the NSA and Home Minister Rajnath Singh — come clean on this.
Questioning the probe by the NIA, Mr. Singh said while the agency said six terrorists were involved, only four bodies were recovered. Describing the permission granted by the government to Pakistan Special Investigation Team (SIT) to visit Pathankot Airbase for investigation as “absolute blunder,” Mr. Singh alleged that the Pak SIT had included the ISI and the Army intelligence persons. He said the government must now as a quid pro quo ask Indian SIT team to question Hafeez Sayeed and Masood Azar.
