'Sonia Gandhi was shaken by gruesome death of Batla encounter terrorists and shed tears': Salman Khurshid

New Delhi, Nov 13: For Congress leader Salman Khurshid equating to the jihadist Islamist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram was not enough that he found himself into another controversy. This came as he said Sonia Gandhi was shaken when she was shown pictures of terrorists killed in Batla House and shed tears but showed no compassion for decorated Mohan Chand Sharma.

  

While speaking to Rahul Shivshankar of Times Now, Khurshid emphasized that Gandhi was taken aback by the manner in which the Indian Mujahideen terrorists were neutralized. He justified, "I can tell you what I said and what had happened. The gruesome pictures that were produced and shown, shook her. She said, ‘Do not show them to me.’ She was not shaken by the ideology of the man who was killed but the manner in which a human being was killed."

 

 

Khurshid further added, "For the worst people of the country, we do not allow executions on the streets. That’s the law in the country." At that point, Rahul Shivshankar pointed out that the men were not ordinary but terrorists, who had killed a police officer and were neutralised in the encounter. "She did not shed tears for the police officer," the Times Now journalist stated.

 

 

The Congress leader then tried to give a clean chit to the Batla House terrorists by claiming that the matter was controversial. Rahul Shivshankar then pointed out to Salman Khurshid that a court had held the accused in the Batla House encounter guilty. On hearing that, the Congress leader said, “Of course, if the judgment has come, let it rest there. Let’s not question that."

 

 

The Batla House Encounter was an armed Delhi Police operation to arrest terrorists of the Indian terror outfit Indian Mujahideen, hiding in a flat in the Batla House area of Jamia Nagar, Okhla, on 19 September 2008. The operation resulted in the deaths of two terrorists and one police officer, Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, with the remaining terrorists arrested. On 15 March 2021, one of the arrested Ariz Khan alias Junaid, was sentenced to death for the murder of Inspector Sharma.