Union minister of state for labour and employment Shobha Karandlaje filed an affidavit on Tuesday before the Madras high court apologising to the people of Tamil Nadu for her statements on the Rameshwaram Cafe blast in Bengaluru in March.
“I state that the alleged comment made by me about the people of Tamil Nadu while addressing the media about the Rameshwaram cafe bomb blast case at Bengaluru, was made without any intention to hurt the sentiments and feeling of the people of Tamil Nadu,” the minister said in her affidavit. “Hence, I hereby once again tender my apology to the people of Tamil Nadu for having caused any hurt from my comments. The same may kindly be taken on record in the interest of the justice.”
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Karandlaje had filed a petition before justice G Jayachandran to quash the first information report (FIR) against her registered by Tamil Nadu’s Madurai cyber crime police on March 20. It was based on the complaint of a resident against her for “promoting enmity” between different groups.
In the previous hearing in August, the Madras high court had granted 10 days’ time for the counsel of Karandlaje to get instructions from her on a press meet to apologise for her remarks on the Rameshwaram cafe blast.
In a video that had gone viral, the Union minister could be seen blaming “people from Tamil Nadu” for the March 1 blast at the Rameshwaram Cafe in Karnataka’s Bengaluru. The court had earlier questioned on what basis she made the comments that the bombers had been trained in Tamil Nadu before even the National Investigation Agency (NIA) conducted searches in Chennai.
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The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of Tamil Nadu had complained to the election commission of India (ECI) while the model code of conduct (MCC) was in effect given the Lok Sabha elections concluded in June. Karandlaje later, on March 19 apologised for her remark.
“People from Tamil Nadu come here, get trained there, and plant bombs here. They placed a bomb in the cafe,” she had said in March, alleging that the bomber was trained in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri forests under Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin’s nose.
The case has been posted to September 5.