General secretary Congress Digvijay Singh on Monday triggered a controversy, alleging that the Telangana Police was trapping Muslim youth by encouraging them to join terror group ISIS. He alleged that the police Telangana had set up a bogus ISIS site and was posting agitating information to trap young Muslim men in the state.
His statement triggered angry reactions from the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the state government, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and they asked him to provide evidence to back his claim. The congress leader was talking about a suspected ISIS member who was killed in an anti-terror operation in Lucknow in March 2017. He also tweeted “It was on their information that MP police arrested accused who were responsible for the bomb blast in a train in Shajapur District of Madhya Pradesh. And this also resulted in Saifullaha encounter in Kanpur of Uttar Pradesh in the same day,”
He questioned if Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had authorized his police to trap Muslim youth. Just 2 days ago on Saturday Mr. Digvijay was relieved of Karnataka and Goa charge for his inept handling of Congress party units. It is not clear why a public meeting in Warangal has been called and what brought about the outburst from the Congress leader.
The remark of the congress leader triggered a row, with the Chief Minister’s son and State IT minister KTR Rao responding, “An irresponsible thing is coming from a former CM” Even they requested Digvijay to withdraw his comments unconditionally or provide evidence. BJP veteran Mr. Venkaiah Naidu said, “He should present evidence or tender apology. Telangana state police proactively shares information on anti-terror operations with other states. Such baseless charges demoralize the police forces. State police chief Anurag Sharma termed it as an attempt to “lower the moral of the hard working state police.
The director general of police said, “The state Police had never said they were behind the arrest of those responsible for the bomb blast in MP. We are doing our duty sincerely. We are very much offended with this type of comments”. On early March, the UP anti-terrorist squad killed a suspected ISIS member Saifullah, who was linked to a blast in Bhopal Ujjain express, allegedly on a tip-off provided by the Telangana Police. In the blast, 10 people were injured.
This is the second negative comment by Mr. Digvijay Singh. His first comment was about the Maoist activity in Chhattisgarh. Mr. Singh accused CM Raman Singh of “helping” only a few hours after Maoists killed 25 Central Reserve Police Personnel in on April 24.
When asked for evidence for those comments, Digvijay Singh said it was in public domain as the accused in the train blast had posted pictures of the train on a supposed ISIS website that was actually operated by Telangana state cops who later informed the Madhya Pradesh police. Meanwhile, the organization Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) of Telangana has demanded a high-level inquiry into Singh’s allegations.
