NEW DELHI: Outgoing Lok Sabha Speaker and BJP leader Sumitra Mahajan has added fuel to Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s remark, saying that the slain IPS officer Hemant Karkare “became a martyr” just because he died in the line of duty, The Indian Express reported.
The BJP’s MP from Indore on Monday, 29 April also claim that the role of Hemant Karkare as the chief of Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS) was “not above board”
“There are two aspects to Hemant Karkare. He became a martyr because he died in the line of duty, but if his role as a police officer was not correct, we will say it was not correct,’’ Mahajan told the newspaper.
On Sunday, Union Minister and RPI (A) chief Ramdas Athawale slammed the ruling BJP for its decision to field Thakur as Bhopal Lok Sabha candidate.
“Her name had figured in the Malegaon case and Karkare had enough evidence against her,” the Union minister had said.
Thakur, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case and the BJP candidate against Congress’s Digvijaya Singh in Bhopal, had earlier said that former ATS chief lost his life because she had cursed him.
Karkare was killed along with two other senior police officers while fighting terrorists during the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in November 2008.
Pragya Thakur is among the seven accused facing trial in Malegaon blast case. Six people were killed and a dozen others were injured after a bomb placed on a motorcycle exploded in Maharashtra’s Malegaon on September 29, 2008.