NEW DELHI: Senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday questioned senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi‘s account of her reaction to the Babri Masjid demolition, asking why she had not expressed similar grief over the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and the Godhra train burning incident.Reacting to Gandhi’s recently released memoir, he alleged that her account lacked honesty and accused her of selective silence on major events during the Congress regime, news agency PTI reported.“Every person has the right to write a book on his or her own life. But such a book should have a bit of honesty. That appears to be lacking,” Prasad told journalists in his Lok Sabha constituency of Patna Sahib.He questioned why Gandhi had not shed tears when thousands of Sikhs were killed in the 1984 riots in Delhi following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Recalling his role as a lawyer for several riot victims, Prasad also invoked Rajiv Gandhi’s controversial remark that “the ground shakes when a big tree falls”.Prasad further targeted Gandhi over her criticism of the handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, asking why she had remained silent over the Godhra train burning incident, in which nearly 60 kar sevaks were killed after coaches of the Sabarmati Express were set on fire.
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The BJP leader also accused Gandhi of failing to strongly criticise Rajiv Gandhi over the Shah Bano case, in which his government overturned a Supreme Court ruling granting maintenance to a divorced Muslim woman.Her memoir, “Belonging: A Journey of Love,” was released in India on Tuesday. The 526-page memoir, published by HarperCollins India, traces Sonia Gandhi’s life, from her childhood in post-war Italy and marriage into the Nehru-Gandhi family to the assassination of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, and her eventual entry into politics.
