On Monday a special NIA court today in Hyderabad acquitted all the accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast which claimed nine lives. Incidentally, all the acquitted accused in this matter belonged to the Hindu faith, and as a result, the Congress party was accused of falsely peddling the “Saffron Terror” narrative while it was in power

After being cornered over this issue, the Congress surprised many by claiming that it never used the term “Saffron terror”. Reports quoted All India Congress Committee (AICC) spokesman PL Punia asserting that there was no such thing as Saffron terror while challenging people to produce a video or sound clip of Rahul Gandhi or any other Congress leader using the same.

With Congress now feigning ignorance over their propagation of the phrase “Hindu terror”, here are a few instances of the Congress leaders openly contradicting this claim.

Most famously, a Wikileaks tape dating back to 2009 recorded former US ambassador to India – Timothy Roemer recounting how Rahul Gandhi in a conversation with him claimed that radicalised Hindu groups were a bigger threat than the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

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Besides Rahul Gandhi, senior Congress leaders too have made similar allegations.

In 2013, the then Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde claimed that BJP and the RSS were spreading “Hindu terrorism” via their “training camps”. He also alleged that Hindus were behind Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid blast which now has been proven to be a lie.

In 2010, erstwhile Home Minister P Chidambaram “cautioned” law enforcement authorities with regards to “the recently uncovered phenomenon of saffron terror”.

Even controversial Congress leader Digvijaya Singh has been quoted in 2013 as questioning as to why did all the “Hindu terrorists” have RSS links. He though had a change of heart two years later when he objected to the use of the term saffron terror.

As the AICC spokesman P L Punia had challenged people to produce even a single clip of Congress leader leaders using the said terms, here are a couple of video clips too, which corroborate the allegations made by Chidambaram and Shinde.

In the first clip, former Home Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram is seen talking about the recently uncovered phenomenon of “Saffron Terrorism” implicated in many bomb blasts of the past:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mhcUmXHruE?start=37]

In another video Senior Congress leader Sushilkumar Shinde is seen claiming to receive a report that BJP and RSS training camps are spreading Hindu terror:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqqcFsha6ZE?start=53]

In light of the aforementioned evidence, it remains to be seen whether the AICC spokesperson PL Punia will apologise for misleading people. It also needs to be seen whether party president Rahul Gandhi too will apologise for defaming a whole community via the “Hindu terror” bogey, now that Congress has denied the existence of the same.