Congress vice-president, Rahul Gandhi.

MEERUT: A day after Congress vice-president, Rahul Gandhi refused to tender an apology in a criminal defamation case against him for his 2014 statement that said “RSS killed Gandhiji” - drawing flak from the Supreme Court for it -Hindu Mahasabha members on Wednesday said that there was nothing wrong in the remark.

“BJP and RSS were with Nathuram Godse on the issue when the decision to kill Mahatma Gandhi was taken. In fact, it was only two hours after Mahatma Gandhi was shot that members of RSS went to Jawaharlal Nehru and said that they will eliminate Hindu Mahasabha. Godse was very much a part of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha and it is sad that after he gave his life for a noble cause, politics is being played over him,” said Pandit Ashok Sharma, national vice-president, Hindu Mahasabha.

On Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi had refused to apologise in the case filed by RSS worker Rajesh Kunte, leading the Supreme Court to ask the Congress leader to be ready to face trial if an apology wasn't forthcoming. Referring to an earlier judgment that said Godse was an RSS worker, the apex court noted, "On this basis, you (Rahul Gandhi) cannot make a collective denunciation (that RSS killed Gandhiji). If you had said some people from RSS had killed Gandhiji, it would have been different. But you said RSS killed Gandhiji.”

Commenting on whether Godse was linked with RSS or not, Chandra Prakash Kaushik, national president, Hindu Mahasabha, said, “Godse was a nationalist writer linked with RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. It is wrong for the RSS to say that Godse had no link with them. We have no qualms in accepting the fact that he was linked to Hindu Mahasabha, and we celebrate his birthday too, but it is high time that RSS accepts this too.”

