RSS praises Indira Gandhi for tough stand against terror

NEW DELHI: RSS has praised late Indira Gandhi as the only one who had stood her ground against terror while it took a dig at BJP's Jaswant Singh for accompanying Kashmiri terrorists to secure the release of a planeload of Indian hostages.

In its editorial on the current hostage crisis in Odisha, RSS mouthpiece Organiser has said neither the Centre nor the states have a "well-defined policy" on kidnapping and hostage-prisoner swap.

"While Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister in 1984 went ahead and hanged Maqbool Bhat when the Kashmiri terrorists held the 48-year-old Indian diplomat Ravindra Mhatre as hostage. He was killed by the terrorists. Since then there has hardly ever been any instance when the government stood its ground," the editorial in latest edition of Organiser said.

It has cited examples where the government of the day bowed before the terrorists in a hostage situation.

"At Kandahar in 1999, the Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh accompanied top Kashmiri terrorists to secure the release of a planeload of Indians," the mouthpiece said.

The article also mentions the Rubaiya Sayeed case, where the daughter of the then Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, was kidnapped in 1989 by Kashmiri extremists and the government of India had yielded.

The RSS mouthpiece insists that Maoists have used kidnapping successfully as a means not just for securing the release of its cadres but also to gain breathing time for "recouping and regrouping".

The article maintains that a "well-thought out strategy" needs to be put in place to convey that India is not a weak state, failing which the whole anti-terror campaign would become a joke.