New Delhi: The election Commission has served BJP’s Bhopal candidate Pragya Singh Thakur with a show cause notice for violating the model code of conduct after she made uncharitable remarks against martyred former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare on Thursday. Karkare had lost his life fighting terrorists during the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack in 2008.  

Thakur’s candidature — a direct threat to Digvijay Singh of the Congress—from the high-profile Bhopal seat had ruffled a lot of feathers as she is an accused in the Malegaon Blasts case. While she was acquitted in the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) case, she is still out on bail on charges under the unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

“The investigation commission called Hemant Karkare to Mumbai. I was lodged in the Mumbai jail at that time. The commission told Karkare ‘if you do not have evidence, let the sadhvi go; it is otherwise illegal and wrong’. He instead said, ‘I will do anything to get evidence against her; will fabricate; will get it from here and there, but will not let her go’.  This was his scheming; he was anti-national; he was anti-religion,” she had said at an event at Suncity Marriage Garden in Bhopal.

“He tortured me so much; abused me with such invectives which were unbearable. I told him ‘tera sarvanash hoga’ (you will be destroyed). Just after a month and quarter, terrorists killed him. The ‘sutak’ (inauspicious time) had ended that very day,” said Sadhvi Pragya had added.

The EC has told the Bhopal unit chief of the BJP that the party needed to file an explanation within a day or ex-parte action would be initiated.