Sadhvi Pragya a nationalist but was treated like a terrorist :

Yoga guru Ramdev on Friday came out in support of controversial BJP leader Sadhvi Pragya Thakur calling her a nationalist who was arrested on the basis of mere suspicion and tortured in jail for nine years as if she were a terrorist.

The yoga guru was in the city to accompany Ravi Shankar Prasad while the union minister filed nomination for Patna Sahib Lok Sabha constituency.

"It was gunaah ki parakashtha (the height of atrocity). You arrest a person just on the basis of mere suspicion and make her undergo physical and mental torture for nine years. The stress that she had to endure weakened her physically and she got afflicted with cancer. She is not a terrorist but a nationalist lady," Ramdev told reporters here.

We should show some empathy for the woman who and try to understand her ordeal and the bitterness it must have given rise to", he said at a news conference earlier in the day when asked to comment on the controversial statement by Pragya Thakur, the Malegaon blasts accused, that former Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare was killed in the 26/11 attack because of her "curse".

Karkare had suspected her of being a "Hindu terrorist".

However, when asked whether he would go to Bhopal to campaign for her, Ramdev quipped "What I have said is enough to provide you with headlines. Please be content with that".

The yoga guru was quick to say that he usually did not accompany political leaders when they filed their nomination papers but made an exception in the case of Prasad, whom he considers mangalkari (auspicious) for the city of Pataliputra (the name by which Patna was known in ancient times) just like Modi (PM) is for the country".

Showering praises on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the yoga guru said "Modi has only one agenda and that is to make India a superpower. He works 16-20 hours per day towards that objective. And he has single mindedness as he has no family or any other distractions".

To querries on Congress president Rahul Gandhi, he said "I do not want our country to become a single-party democracy. There should be space for opposition. But I must say that Modi appears like a mountain in front of whom all other challengers look like dwarfs."