*NEW DELHI – India’s ruling party on Friday backed a court decision toacquit a group of Hindu hardliners accused of killing 68 people in a trainbombing, despite the judge expressing reservations over the verdict.*
The country’s top anti-terror agency had charged the men over the 2007bombing when the opposition Congress party was in government, but a fullverdict handed down on Thursday revealed there was not enough evidence toconvict them.
Most of the victims aboard the “Samjhauta (friendship) Express” train werePakistanis on their way home from India, and prosecutors at the timedescribed the crime as a ‘Hindu terror’ plot to kill Muslims.
The special judge presiding over the historic case, Jagdeep Singh, said hehad arrived at the verdict with “deep pain and anguish”, accusingprosecutors from the National Investigation Agency of “withholding the bestevidence” from the court.
The crime had gone unpunished, Singh said.
The verdict in the landmark case came two weeks before voting starts inIndia’s national election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindunationalist leader, is seeking re-election.
Among those acquitted last week was Swami Aseemanand, an influential Hindumonk belonging to a group with historic ties to Modi’s Bharatiya JanataParty (BJP).
India’s finance minister and BJP leader Arun Jaitley said the acquittalvindicated the party’s view that the Congress had sought to smear Hindus byblaming hardliners for the crime.
“To establish their theory of Hindu terror, a wrong set of people wereframed — innocent people lost their lives (in the blast) and the realculprits were not caught,” he told reporters in Delhi on Friday, flanked bysenior BJP cadres.
“When there was no evidence […] Congress government maligned the Hinducommunity by labelling them terrorists.”
The concept of ‘saffron terror’ is fiercely rejected by Hindu nationalistsand came into prominence after police arrested Hindu militants for a stringof deadly bomb attacks, mostly targeting mosques and Muslim districts,between 2006 and 2008.
The Congress-led government at the time accused right-wing Hindu outfits oforchestrating the attacks that killed dozens.
The BJP, in turn, has pointed the finger at Muslim militants, includingsome groups it alleges are based in Pakistan, for the train bombing.
Islamabad last week condemned the verdict, accusing India “of duplicity andhypocrisy”. – APP/AFP