Bharatiya Janata Party MP Pragya Singh Thakur – an accused in the Malegaon blasts case – has been nominated to the 21-member panel on Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Defence.
It was reported by The Indian Express that she was nominated in the committee that is headed by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
The Congress called the move “an insult to our nation’s defence forces and to every Indian”.
“Pragya Thakur, a terror accused & Godse fanatic has been nominated by the BJP govt. to be a member of the Parliamentary Panel on Defence. This move is an insult to our nation’s defence forces, to our nation’s esteemed parliamentarians & to every Indian,” the Congress tweeted from its official Twitter handle, @INCIndia.
Pragya Singh Thakur is an accused in Malegaon case in which six people had died from an explosion near a mosque and around 100 people were injured. The explosion took place on September 2008 and Thakur has been under trial under multiple charges since then.
The trial against her is being conducted by National Investigation Agency (NIA) which had earlier dropped charges against her under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act. Following the dropping of charges, Bombay High Court in 2017 had granted bail to her on health grounds in 2017. The current charges against her have been brought under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act by NIA.
The MP had courted controversy earlier during the Lok Sabha campaigns when she claimed that the investigating officer of Malegaon case died because she had “cursed” him due to falsely accusing her in the case. She had also called Nathuram Godse, who killed Mahatma Gandhi, a patriot.
