‘Clear stand on terrorism’: Karnataka CM to Congress amid blast probe row

The chief minister was reacting to Shivakumar’s statement suggesting that the Mangaluru pressure cooker blast was orchestrated by the BJP government to divert attention away from the voter data theft scandal.

Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai asked the Congress leadership to clarify their stand on terrorism on Friday after the party’s state president DK Shivakumar questioned the probe into the Mangaluru blast.

Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai asked the Congress leadership to clarify their stand on terrorism (ANI)

The chief minister was reacting to Shivakumar’s statement suggesting that the Mangaluru pressure cooker blast was orchestrated by the BJP government to divert attention away from the voter data theft scandal.

“I want to ask Congress - Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi - are you in favour of terrorists? Or, are you with patriots?” Bommai said.

“Congress’ policy is such that earlier, too, they have trivialised terror incidents and have supported terrorists,” he added.

“They had criticised the hanging of a terrorist. This is part of their appeasement strategy for elections. They feel that they will get minority votes with such statements and have used the same old technique. But people are aware, such things won’t work anymore,” Bommai told reporters in Bengaluru.

The chief minister further said questioning the police who have arrested a terrorist with sufficient evidence will affect the morale of the police department and boost the morale of the terrorists.

Shivakumar on Thursday said that the BJP government and the director general of police(DGP) Praveen Sood are damaging the state’s image on a global level.

KPCC president also said that the Mangaluru blast was declared a terror activity without an investigation.

Speaking to the reporters on Thursday, Shivakumar said, “Hours after the Mangaluru blast, the ruling government and DGP immediately declared it a terrorist activity without any investigation, as if it was similar to the Mumbai terror attack. How can the police call someone a terrorist without even a basic investigation? If it was a terror attack, why did not they immediately hand over the case to National Investigation Agency (NIA). BJP government is used to diverting the main issues by creating panic among the public.”

On Friday, Shivakumar refused to take his statement back. “My stand is clear. I am not going to take back my words on the Mangaluru blast case. I am not defending the accused but trying to say that the BJP is using such incidents to cover their failures. Important issues like corruption and voter data scam are sidelined using the blast case (but) never I had said not to investigate the accused,” Shivakumar said.

On November 19, an explosion was reported in an auto-rickshaw in Mangaluru, injuring the driver and the passenger. A day after the blast in Mangaluru, in which two people, including Shariq, were injured, state police chief Praveen Sood on November 20 had declared the incident an “act of terror to cause serious damage”.

During the probe, police identified Shariq as the bomber. According to police, videos on how to make bike bombs and cooker bombs were recovered from Shariq’s phone. The investigation pointed out that the nature of the IED shows that the group did not have enough funding or support. Police identified the material used to make the IED has potassium chlorate, used to manufacture match boxes and crackers.

The police have recovered 150 matchboxes, sulphur powder and gunpowder from a Mysuru house where Shariq stayed earlier.

After the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the case, two old cases involving him became of interest to the investigating agency. Police arrested Shariq in December 2020. The arrest was the result of an investigation into pro-terror graffiti on the walls of a building in the East police station limits and on a wall in the North police station limits. Police arrested Shariq and Mazz Muneer Ahmed, aka, Mazz, who was then 21 years old.

It was two years later, in September, Shariq’s name cropped up in another terror-related case. Shivamogga police on September 23 had said that two associates of a person arrested in connection with the stabbing incident during a clash over Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s poster in Shivamogga on August 15 have links to the Islamic State.

One of the four arrested men told police that Mazz, who was arrested along with Shariq in the graffiti case, was an associate. When police took Mazz into custody, he told police that, along with Shariq, he had conducted trial bomb blasts along the banks of the Tungabhadra river.

(With inputs from PTI)