NEW DELHI: The BJP on Monday welcomed a Delhi court’s conviction of former Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain in the killing of Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma during the 2020 northeast Delhi riots and alleged that the AAP and Congress had backed those accused of violence.
The remarks came after a Delhi court on Monday convicted Hussain and four others in the killing of Sharma, while acquitting six other accused.
BJP’s national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari also attacked the AAP, alleging that its leaders had defended Hussain for “vote-bank politics”. “Tahir Hussain, blue-eyed boy of the AAP, gets convicted for murdering IB officer Ankit Sharma.
Sanjay Singh and Arvind Kejriwal have defended Tahir Hussain for vote-bank politics,” he said in a post on X. He claimed that the nation would not forget that the AAP had chosen to stand with a “murderer and rioter” for electoral gains.
BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said Hussain’s conviction is an indictment of AAP and Congress.“Hussain has been convicted. Satyamev Jayate. It is the conviction of the entire AAP-Congress ecosystem, which was behind these anti-Hindu riots,” Poonawalla further alleged in a video statement. He alleged that the AAP had “sponsored” the riots and later defended Hussain by portraying him as a victim.
AAP said that within hours of an FIR being registered against Tahir in the 2020 riots, the party suspended him from its primary membership and since then, he has had no association with AAP.
Delhi BJP president Harsh Malhotra hailed the conviction and demanded that Kejriwal tender a public apology. “AAP had a strong bond with several anti-national activists, which has time and again been exposed,” Malhotra claimed. BJP alleged that the 2020 riots were “not organic” but a “sponsored attack” against Hindus.
Delhi’s tourism minister and MLA from Karawal Nagar in North East Delhi, Kapil Mishra, said that the riots were a “well-planned conspiracy to “massacre” Hindus and force them to flee from the area. “Who was Tahir Hussain, and why were AAP leaders protecting him?” Mishra said claiming that Hussain was in touch with AAP leaders during the riots..