Union Minister Shobha Karandlaje has filed an affidavit before the Madras High Court, on Tuesday, September 3, apologising to the people of Tamil Nadu for her comments during the Rameshwaram Cafe blast in Bengaluru in March this year. Shobha had claimed that a person from Tamil Nadu planted the bomb in Bengaluru’s Rameswaram cafe. She said that the comment was made without any intention to hurt the sentiments and feelings of the people of Tamil Nadu.
In her affidavit, she has said that she has ‘the highest respect and regard’ to the history, rich culture, tradition and to the people of Tamil Nadu and that she had no intentions to hurt the sentiments of Tamil Nadu people. “I hereby once again tender my apology to the people of Tamil Nadu for having caused any hurt from my comments. The same may kindly be taken on record in the interest of justice,” the affidavit said.
The affidavit was filed by the Union minister, supporting her earlier plea to quash a case registered against her by the Madurai police. A first information report (FIR) was registered on March 20, based on a complaint filed by a local resident C Thiagarajan. She was booked under sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation, with intent to cause riot), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language), 505 (1)(b) and 505 (2) (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Earlier, after severe backlash, she issued a retraction and apologised for her statement. "To my Tamil brothers & sisters, I wish to clarify that my words were meant to shine light, not cast shadows. Yet I see that my remarks brought pain to some - and for that, I apologize. My remarks were solely directed towards those trained in the Krishnagiri forest, linked to the Rameshwaram Cafe blast. To anyone from Tamil Nadu effected, From the depths of my heart, I ask your forgiveness. Furthermore, I retract my previous comments,” Shobha had said in a post on social media.
This is not the first time that the BJP leader has made such a statement. In 2020, Shobha said people from Kerala travelling to Karnataka should furnish reasons for their travels, reasoning that Malayalis were violently protesting in Mangaluru against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), for which she was booked by the Kerala police. In 2018, she alleged that 23 Hindu activists were killed by 'jihadis' in Karnataka. However, a ground report by Scroll exposed how some of the men named in the list were in fact alive, while a few others were killed in unrelated incidents. Shobha has also claimed that an 18-year-old boy Paresh Mesta was tortured and killed by a communal mob in Karnataka, only to be proven wrong by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2022.
