Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Saturday said that the arrest of party leader and Maharashtra Minority Affairs Minister Nawab Malik is "politically motivated" and attempts were made to connect him to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim "because he is a Muslim".
"Malik's arrest is a politically motivated one. He is being linked to Dawood Ibrahim because he is a Muslim. Malik and his family members are being deliberately harassed but we will fight back," the NCP chief said.
The former Union Minister also dismissed the demands raised by the Opposition seeking the resignation of Malik, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi should explain why Narayan Rane didn't resign when he was arrested. Pawar said different yardsticks are being applied to Union Minister Narayan Rane, who belongs to BJP, and Malik.
"I don't remember our former party worker Narayan Rane had to resign after his arrest recently. Tomorrow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is coming to Pune. He may explain more about it. Applying one yardstick for Malik and another for Rane shows that all this was politically motivated," he claimed.
For the unversed, Malik was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on February 23 in a money-laundering probe linked to the activities of Dawood Ibrahim and his aides.
Rane was arrested last August by the police at Sangameshwar in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra for his statement that he would have slapped state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray for forgetting the year India got freedom during his Independence Day speech.
(With PTI inputs)
