Are we sustaining terrorists like Afzal Guru? asks Jitender Singh

Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) Jitender Singh on Thursday said that former Home Minister and senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram questioning the extent of Afzal Guru's role in the 2001 parliament attack, draws a bottom line that are we directly or indirectly supporting terrorists like Afzal Guru?

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"Having said that there is another aspect to it, I think the time has come for the nation to draw the bottom line, are we to directly or indirectly support people like Afzal Guru who had the cheek to attack the Parliament house. And if so what kind of message are we sending out?" Singh told ANI here.

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"Without getting into any personalised comment I would just like to make a small observation. That the hanging of Afzal guru took place when the UPA government was in power and the entire process went through a detail judicial process as a culmination of which this has happened," he added.

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Singh further said this kind of bottom line is not seen anywhere in the world, even in the most advance democracy of the world.

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"There have been movement in the past and there have been protest in the past, but on each occasion the basic objective was to uphold the honor of Mother India. Never had it had the freedom to dishonor mother India, and this is something the nation has to actually introspect," he added.

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Chidambaram earlier told a leading English daily in an interview that he felt it was possible to hold an 'honest opinion' that the case was 'perhaps not correctly decided' and that there were 'grave doubts about the extent of his involvement' in the 2001 Parliament attack.

"I think it is possible to hold an honest opinion that the Afzal Guru case was perhaps not correctly decided," said Chidambaram, who was the country's Home Minister from 2008 to 2012, before being switched to the Finance Ministry.

"But being in government you cannot say the court has decided the case wrongly because it was the government that prosecuted him. But an independent person can hold an opinion that the case was not decided correctly," he added.

Afzal Guru was executed in 2013 when Sushilkumar Shinde was the Home Minister.