Bhopal: Pragya Singh Thakur, the Malegaon blast accused and Bhopal BJP candidate, expressed confidence about winning the Lok Sabha elections as trends showed her beating senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh. “I will definitely win. My victory will be a victory of dharma. Adharma (evil) will be wiped out,” Thakur said. According to the figures on the Election Commission of India (ECI) website, Thakur was ahead of Singh with a margin of 370696 votes.
Expressing thanks to the people of the constituency, she said, “I express my gratitude to the people of Bhopal,” she said. Thakur faced a lot of flak during her canvassing for calling Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse a ‘true patriot’. The BJP condemned the remark, following which she apologised. On another occasion, Thakur, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case said that former Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) Hemant Karkare lost his life because she had cursed him.
Karkare was killed along with two other senior police officers while fighting terrorists during the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. Pragya Thakur is among the seven accused facing trial in Malegaon blast case. Six people were killed and a dozen others were injured after a bomb placed on a motorcycle exploded in Maharashtra’s Malegaon on September 29, 2008. She was arrested in 2008 but was given a clean chit by the National Investigation Agency in 2015 for lack of evidence. However, the trial court refused to let her off, saying it was difficult to accept since her motorcycle was used in the blast. Thakur has been cleared of charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act and was granted bail by the Bombay High Court in 2017 but remains an accused under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. She joined the BJP in April.
