Rajnath claims Hafiz Saeed backed JNU’s Afzal Guru incident

Home minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said a programme that allegedly praised Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University had the support of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed.

Home minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said a programme that allegedly praised Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University had the support of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh address during a party rally in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday.(PTI Photo)

“Police is investigating all facts and looking at evidence. But I would like to make clear that whatever happened in JNU had the support of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed, and this fact should be understood by all countrymen. Lashkar-e-Taiba has expressed its support for the incident,” Singh said in Allahabad.

Singh rejected allegations that the government was harassing JNU students. “I have given requisite instructions to officials of security agencies and made it clear that no innocent should be harassed or booked,” he said.

“Those involved in anti-India activities or propaganda will not be spared and those who are innocent will not be harassed,” Singh said separately in a tweet.

“No one should measure such incidents on the scales of political gains and loss,” he said when journalists asked him about Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s visit to JNU on Saturday.

The home minister’s comments came two days after a series of tweets, purportedly by Saeed, had appeared under a hashtag asking Pakistanis to support the agitation in JNU.

Police are investigating as to whether the Twitter handle actually belonged to the LeT founder.

Delhi Police had also issued an alert through its official Twitter handle on Friday.

JNU campus has been tense since Friday, when Kanhaiya Kumar, the students union president, was arrested for alleged sedition and Delhi Police launched a search for 10 students, including the daughter of Communist Party of India leader D Raja.

The police action snowballed into a political free-for-all on Saturday with Opposition parties likening the situation to the Emergency and the ruling BJP accusing them of speaking the language of Pakistani terrorists.

Pakistan’s Saeed is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that left 166 people dead. He is an internationally designated terrorist but moves around in Pakistan, openly calling for jihad against India.

Guru, a Kashmiri, was hanged in Delhi’s Tihar jain in 2013 for his role in the 2001 attack on Parliament by members of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar militant groups.

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