By IANS,
Mumbai : Opposing the turn Malegaon blast case investigations are taking, Shiv Sena has called for a Maharashtra shutdown Monday to express solidarity with two of the prime accused, Sadhvi Pragnya Chandrapal Singh Thakur and army officer Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit.
According to Sanjay Raut, a Rajya Sabha member from Shiv Sena, the shutdown call is prompted by the feeling in the party and people at large at the manner the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) is conducting the investigations into the blast.
“There is a feeling that the ATS is coming up with these things daily without proof and it is obviously functioning under political pressure,” Raut told IANS here Wednesday.
He said that it will be a shutdown in the “old, traditional Shiv Sena style,” and that party activists will be out on the roads to enforce the action.
The winter session of the state legislature is due to open in Nagpur Monday.
Six people were killed in the blast in Malegaon town of Maharashtra on the night of Sep 29. The ATS has arrested at least 10 including the sadhvi, the serving army officer and some radical Hindu activists.
Several Hindu organisations have opposed allegations that there was a radical Hindutva ‘terror network’ behind the blast.