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Club all blasts for CBI probe: Mayawati

LUCKNOW: Chief Minister Mayawati has rejected the Union Government’s proposal for an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the Kanpur bomb blast case of August 24. She has suggested that only if the Centre is willing for a probe by the investigating agency in the Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi serial bomb blasts in the civil courts premises, the Gorakhpur blast and the terrorist attack on the CRPF camp in Rampur, along with the Kanpur incident, would the State Government recommend a CBI probe into these incidents.

The letter containing the UP Government’s suggestions has been sent to the Union Government, Ms. Mayawati said on Wednesday.

Ms. Mayawati clarified that a CBI probe into the Kanpur bomb blast case alone would not be recommended by her. She said the Congress-led UPA Government had not proposed a CBI inquiry into the earlier serial blast cases but it lost no time in asking for a probe once the name of Bajrang Dal surfaced in the Kanpur incident. Nor was a CBI probe proposed by the Centre into the terrorist attack in Ayodhya and Sankat Mochan blasts in Varanasi during the Samajwadi Party regime, the Chief Minister said. “This despite the fact that several lives were lost and many others were injured in these terror-related incidents,” she added.

The Chief Minister told reporters here that the Union Government was aware that those behind the conspiracy would be exposed in the investigations being conducted by the UP police, so it proposed a CBI probe. She alleged that the UPA Government was actually trying to shield the Bajrang Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

She said CBI inquiries had been recommended in the past into 19 important and sensitive cases but the State Government’s request was turned down by the Central investigating agency by taking the plea of paucity of officers and large number of pending cases.

Stating that investigations were being conducted by the Special Task Force and Anti-Terrorist Squad into the Lucknow, Faizabad, Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Rampur incidents, Ms. Mayawati said considerable progress had been made in these cases.

The request for a CBI probe had been made by the Union Minister of State for Home, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, who is MP from Kanpur, to the Chief Minister by a letter (No.1850/VIP/MOS (SJ)/2008, dated August 26, 2008). The State Government’s reply has been sent to Satyanand Mishra, Secretary, Personnel and Training Department, Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Complaints and Pension, by the UP Principal Secretary (Home), Kunwar Fateh Bahadur.

Two persons alleged to be Bajrang Dal activists were killed in the blast in Mishra Lodge in Kanpur’s Rajiv Nagar locality this past Sunday.

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