BeyondHeadlines News Desk
Senior BJP leader from Delhi, V K Malhotra triggered a new controversy by stating that areas like Jamia Nagar and Batla House have become safe houses for terrorists.
Speaking to a press conference in the capital, he said on Tuesday that there were areas in Delhi from where terror modules were being run and police could not search these areas.
“Police are not able to conduct search operations in places like Jamia Nagar, which are the centre of terrorists,” Delhi BJP’s election committee chairman Malhotra said.
“Earlier, the Congress and the AAP leaders were opposing the arrest of terrorists like Bhatkal for the sake of votes. But after Bhatkal’s interrogation, police got leads about terrorist centres and persons… the country was thus saved from large-scale terrorist violence.”
Mr. Malhotra claimed that police got vital leads after interrogating alleged top Indian Mujahideen operative Zia-ur-Rehman alias Waqas.
“When police reached Batla House and Jamia in Okhla area on the basis of this information to arrest two youths for interrogation, the supporters of terrorists created affray,” he alleged.
“The leaders of the Congress and the AAP reached there and stopped police from interrogating them and also pressurised police to free them.”
Condemning Melhotra’s statement that Jamia and Batla House areas as “dens of terrorist”, All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat (AIMMM) president Zafarul Islam Khan called it “defamatory and utterly irresponsible”.
He said the two youths who were arrested in the morning of 23 March were taken into custody without any resistance from the local residents although the police did not show any arrest warrant. Those two youths were released the same day due to their innocence.
Mr. Khan said electoral politics made Malhotra to issue such an “irresponsible statement” with the intention to “polarise voters on communal lines”.
While demanding a clear apology from Malhotra, AIMMM threaten him of legal action if he fails to “quickly and unconditionally apologise for his baseless statement”.
Rebuffing Malhotra’s claim that police could not conduct search operations in these areas, Human Rights Activist associated with APCR Abubakr Sabbaq said police did it’s work in the case of those two youth in Jamia Nagar.
“We have not asked for their release. We only asked about following things from police: arrest memo, notice under CrPC Section 160, seizure memo, FIR, and Daily Dairy copy.
“Police clearly violated standard procedure that must be followed in any such case, therefore could not produce any of the documents we demanded police officials.”
