MUMBAI: The Congress in Maharashtra on Thursday questioned senior BJP leader and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis over his act of "shaking hands" with 2008 Malegaon blast case accused, Lt Colonel Prasad Purohit, which the party said was captured in a video.
Talking to reporters, Maharashtra Congress leader Sachin Sawant said, "The warmth with which Fadnavis met Purohit showed that the two know each other."
"The BJP has been giving protection to the Malegaon blast accused. Pragya Singh Thakur (another accused in the case) has been made an MP from Bhopal," he alleged.
Purohit, who was an officer from intelligence corps of the Army, was suspended from service soon after he was arrested in connection with the Malegaon blast case in late 2008.
In 2017, around nine years after his arrest, Purohit was granted bail and he walked out of the Taloja jail in neighbouring Navi Mumbai.
Six people were killed in a bomb blast on September 29, 2008 at Malegaon, a communally sensitive textile town in Nashik district of north Maharashtra.