'Hindu terror' Congress's conspiracy; Sonia, Rahul should apologise: BJP

New Delhi, Jul 31 (PTI) The BJP alleged on Thursday that the Congress manufactured the theory of "Hindu terror" when it was in power to stop the rise of the saffron party and Narendra Modi, and appease its Muslim vote bank, as the ruling party welcomed the acquittal of all the seven accused in the Malegaon blast case.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ravi Shankar Prasad demanded that the discharged accused, including former party MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, should be compensated and the prosecution should apologise for allegedly using torture and planting evidence to frame them.

Action should be taken against the officials who allegedly tortured and framed them, Prasad said.

"The Congress can go to any extent to appease its vote bank. This case was a well-calculated conspiracy of the party for sheer vote-bank politics," he said, calling it a historic day.

Prasad said the Congress's attempt to force onto the country the possibility of a Hindu terror organisation and saffron terrorism has fallen flat.

He hit back at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who earlier dismissed questions related to the court verdict as an attempt to detract from real issues and hit out at the BJP-led Centre over US President Donald Trump's critical comments on India's economy.

Citing WikiLeaks reports of 2010, Prasad said Gandhi had, in 2009, told the US ambassador to India that extremist Hindu groups could be more dangerous than the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terror outfit.

It is the same Rahul Gandhi who is now running away from truth, he said.

Rahul Gandhi and his mother, Sonia Gandhi, both former Congress presidents, should apologise to the country, Prasad demanded.

Nearly 17 years after the Malegaon blast claimed six lives, a special court in Mumbai acquitted all seven accused, including Thakur and Purohit, on Thursday, noting that there was "no reliable and cogent evidence" against them.

Prasad praised Purohit as a brave and decorated officer who fought against terrorism in Kashmir and Thakur as a "sant" (seer) and leader. He said both suffered for 17 years due to false charges and should be compensated.

Citing several cases, the BJP leader accused the then Congress-led UPA government of trying to cover up the roles of the Muslim accused and terror organisations, while attempting to pin the blame on Hindus or Hindu groups.

He referred to the cases of Ishrat Jahan, a suspected LeT operative killed in an encounter with the Gujarat Police in 2004, and the Makkah masjid and Samjhauta Express blasts of 2007.

"The Congress can go to any extent for its vote-bank politics," Prasad said.

Home Minister Amit Shah, then a minister in the Gujarat government headed by Modi, was imprisoned on the basis of "sold-out" witnesses in the Ishrat Jahan case and barred by the Supreme Court from entering the state when given bail, he noted.

Prasad claimed that the court was wrong in externing Shah.

Slamming former home ministers P Chidambaram and Sushil Shinde for promoting the idea of saffron and Hindu terrorism, the BJP leader alleged that Chidambaram used the government machinery to frame people in false cases and spread this narrative.

The idea was to make every effort to cement the idea of "Hindu terror" to stop Modi, Shah and the BJP, and go to any extent in being pro-Muslims, he said, targeting the Congress.

Despite the LeT's acknowledgement of its association with Jahan, Chidambaram forced officials to remove her reference as an operative of the terror group, Prasad alleged.

The former Union minister noted that the then UPA government had formed a committee that had blamed "kar sevaks" returning from Ayodhya for the 2001 Godhra train tragedy ahead of the 2005 Bihar Assembly polls.

Several other BJP leaders also expressed happiness at the court verdict, claiming that it proves that a Hindu can never be a terrorist, a statement Shah made in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

BJP MP Nishikant Dubey said there is no such term as "saffron terrorism".

Hindus never indulge in such disgraceful acts, he asserted.

All the blasts that happened in the country between 2005 and 2013 were carried out at the behest of Pakistan, but the UPA government tried to create communal tensions instead of catching Pakistani terrorists, he alleged.

This is the mindset of the Congress and it always indulges in China-friendly and pro-China politics, which has now been exposed, Dubey said.

"Sanatan Dharma is sacred. A Hindu cannot be a terrorist," said BJP's IT department head Amit Malviya.

The September 2008 blasts near a mosque in Maharashtra's Malegaon killed six people and injured 101.

Special Judge A K Lahoti, assigned to hear cases of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), flagged several loopholes in the prosecution's case and the investigation carried out, and said the accused deserved the benefit of doubt.

The Hindu-terror bogey has been busted, BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said after the verdict.

He added that it was not just a court verdict but a moral indictment of those who defamed an entire faith for electoral gains.

"Who will be held accountable for years of humiliation, injustice and media trials? Will Rahul Gandhi apologise to the nation and all Hindus?" Bhatia asked in a post on X. PTI KR PK RC