Sadhvi Pragya Thakur likens Hemant Karkare to Ravan, IPS Association condemns statement

The IPS Association said in an official statement, “Ashok Chakra awardee late Sri Hemant Karkare, IPS made the supreme sacrifice fighting terrorists. Those of us in uniform condemn the insulting statement made by a candidate and demand that sacrifices of all our martyrs be respected.”

Explained |  What is Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s connection to Hemant Karkare?

The BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Bhopal had compared Ashok Chakra awardee and former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare with Ravan and Kans and said he was killed during 26/11 Mumbai attacks because he was cursed for arresting her. In a public meeting in Madhya Pradesh, Thakur on Friday said that she had warned Karkare that he would be destroyed and that’s exactly what happened.

Hemant Karkare. (File)

“You won’t believe. I told him you will be destroyed. He tortured me and abused me. It was intolerable. When a child is born, we observe sutak (an abstention from rituals for a period of 10 days to one and a half months). The day I was picked up by ATS, Karkare got cursed by Sutak. And in 40 days, the day terrorists killed him, the sutak was over. During Ram’s reign there was Ravan. His end was engineered by sanyasis. In dwapar era came Kans. He jailed sanyasis. They cursed him. And he was killed by Krishna,” Thakur, who is facing trial under charges of terrorism for engineering a blast in Maharashtra’s powerloom town of Malegaon in 2008, said.

Thakur has been making provocative statements ever since BJP announced her candidature from Bhopal on Wednesday. She has also tweeted comments on the Gandhi family and questioned the conduct of media for calling her a suspected terrorist when a criminal like Mukhtar Ansari is called “Bahubali”.