By IANS
New Delhi, March 26 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday slammed the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) for aligning with Abdul Nasir Maudany, a former accused in the 1998 Coimbatore serial blasts.
The CPI-M and Maudany’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are supporting an independent candidate in Kerala’s Ponnani Lok Sabha constituency.
The CPI-M siding with Maudany comes despite the Kerala police revealing his alleged links with Sainuddin, a Kannur native who is a suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba commander in south India, a BJP statement said.
Sainuddin, an alleged kingpin of the Bangalore serial blasts last year, is in police custody.
The BJP statement said the CPI-M in Kerala was itself divided over supporting Maudany, with Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan and Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan singing different tunes.
“In the wonderland of the Marxist ruled Kerala, the home minister and the party are siding with known communalists, against their own chief minister,” the BJP statement said.
Maudany, the founder of the PDP, was freed from Coimbatore prison in August 2007, after he was acquitted in the Coimbatore blast case.
His imprisonment without trial for nine years had created controversy. The serial blasts Feb 14, 1998, just ahead of BJP leader L.K. Advani’s poll rally, left 60 people dead and around 250 injured.