Provocative speeches made by BJP leaders at the behest of party leadership: Asaduddin Owaisi

Following the adjournment of Lok Sabha, AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday said that provocative speeches by BJP leaders were made at the behest of the party leadership.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not give any statement on the deaths of innocent lives in the Delhi violence. His party's leaders, including union minister Anurag Thakur and an ex-MLA, provoked people to kill. Did they make these statements on their own? No, they were directed by the party leadership to make such statements," Owaisi told ANI.

"What happened in Delhi was not a communal riot, but a 'pogrom' or a 'genocide'. The government was complicit in the entire incident. The entire world saw how police forced four youths to read out the national anthem. Out of these four persons, one person died. A woman was set on fire in her home and an IB officer died," he added.

He further explained that he had earlier made a comparison between the violence in Delhi and the Gujarat riots of 2002 as the government in both cases had kept quiet for two days after the violence began.

The violence, which began on February 23, raged across several areas of North-East district for four days as houses and shops were burnt down and 46 people lost their lives and over 200 people sustained injuries.

Delhi Police has registered 254 FIRs including 41 cases under the Arms Act. As many as 903 people have been either arrested or detained by police.

Two Special Investigation Teams (SITs) have been constituted under the Delhi Police's Crime Branch to investigate the violence.