JAIPUR: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Thursday said his government will make all efforts to ensure that the culprits in the Jaipur serial blasts case are meted out the harshest punishment, and towards this end the government has appointed the Attorney General of India as its counsel in the Supreme Court.
“It will be the effort of the government to ensure that the harshest punishment is meted out in such cases. That is why we have appointed the Attorney General there (in the Supreme Court) as a lawyer. The matter has been taken up in the Supreme Court. Now, I understand that the hearing is starting, there will definitely be decisions on it….,” Gehlot told reporters.
During the tenure of Vasundhara Raje as state CM, on May 13, 2008 a series of bomb blasts in Jaipur killed 71 people and injured 185 others. The special court which heard this case had convicted Mohammad Sarwar Azmi, Mohammad Saif, Mohammad Salman and Saifur Rehman on December 18, 2019 and sentenced them to death. However, the Rajasthan High Court quashed the conviction due to lack of evidence.
The court also pulled up the probe agency for its “poor” investigation. In the election year, the BJP seems keen to encash on this issue and is claiming that it was a result of Congress’ laxity in pursuing the case due to vote bank politics.
Kicking off the Rajasthan campaign two weeks ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi targeted the Congress government for the acquittals of Jaipur blast case. Union Minister Amit Shah had also raked up this issue during a public rally in Bharatpur last month and had accused the Gehlot government of playing ‘appeasement politics’.
