Mangaluru blast cooked up case: DK Sivakumar

Bengaluru: Karnataka Congress president DK Sivakumar has painted himself to a corner by stating that the recent Mangaluru cooker blast was a cooked up case to divert the attention of the people ahead of the Assembly elections.

Hitting out at DKS, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai accused him of playing vote bank politics ahead of elections.

“In the cooker blast case, the investigation revealed that the incident was a terrorist act. It was also found that the accused was a terrorist. He also manufactured a bomb to carry out a blast in the city to disturb the peace. It was also revealed that the accused in the case had terrorist links. It is really unfortunate to see that Karnataka Congress president DK Shivakumar is trying to back the accused. In the past as well, it has been seen that the Congress party has backed terrorism. Basically, Congress backs terrorists for votes. They are playing vote bank politics,” Bommai said.

Accusing the Congress leaders of being pro-terrorists, Bommai asked, “I want to ask Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Kharge that is their party pro-terrorists. Why are they backing terrorism Are they pro-terrorism or against terrorism.”

On Thursday, DKS sparked a controversy by giving a clean chit to Mangaluru blast accused Mohammed Shareeq and claimed that the cooker blast was just a “mistake”.

“How did they declare him a terrorist without investigation. Was it a terrorist attack like what happened in Mumbai. Nothing is there, someone must have done it by mistake,” Shivakumar said while linking the blast to “voters”.

Taking to Twitter, BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala slammed DKS saying, “DK Shivkumar & Congress gives a clean chit to Mangaluru blast (auto rickshaw/cooker blast) accused suspected to have links with ISIS. The probe has been taken over by NIA but Congress which is quick to label Hindu Terror gives a clean chit to Islamist terror for votebank!”

The statement by DKS did not get support from his party which privately admitted that it was a blunder.