I am surprised at the distorted reports and baseless speculation about my recent remarks on the release of terrorists by the NDA government India in December 1999, solely to save the lives of over 166 innocent passengers who were taken hostage aboard the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 that had been hijacked to Kandahar.
I wish to set the record straight to put an end to this needless controversy.
At my press conference in Pune on 11 April 11 2006, a reporter asked me to explain how I could take out a Yatra against terrorism when it was a BJP-led government that had deputed its External Affairs Minister Shri Jaswant Singh to carry three terrorists in a special aircraft to Kandahar. The question was in response to my earlier criticism of the Congress and the Communists for joining hands in the Kerala legislative assembly to seek the release of Abdul Nazir Madani, the chief accused in the Coimbatore serial bomb blasts case in 1998, in which 58 innocent persons were killed.
In my reply, I said that it was a considered decision of the government to bring the hostages back and whatever Shri Jaswant Singhji did was to implement the government's collective decision.
The reporter then asked me what my opinion was about the government's decision. My reply was: "Whatever my opinion was, I had expressed it within the Cabinet. I do not intend to share it with the media. In any case, it's an old incident and there is no need to discuss it now."
The fundamental difference between the Coimbatore and Kandahar cases is obvious to any unbiased person. In one case, the Congress and the Communists have sought the release of a person who has been facing trial in an act of terrorism that killed 58 innocent citizens. In the other case, the BJP-led government had to release three terrorists only to save the lives of 166 passengers aboard a hijacked plane.
To Write Comment Please Login
.gif)
