A day after senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar said it was a "mistake" to arrest late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray in 2000, Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Saturday sought an apology from Ajit over the arrest.
Taking to Twitter, Raut, who is a Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha member and the party's chief whip in Parliament, said, "You took so many years to realise that it was a mistake to arrest Balasaheb Thackeray. If your tears are real, you should apologise over his arrest."
Ajit Pawar had on Friday said that some senior NCP leaders had insisted on the arrest of Bal Thackeray in 2000, despite the opposition from some others leaders like himself. "It was a mistake," Ajit had said.
Bal Thackeray was arrested by the then-ruling Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra for allegedly inciting communal hatred through the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana. Thackeray's alleged inflammatory writings were published in Saamana after the Babri mosque demolition in 1992, followed by serial blasts in Mumbai that had killed over 300 people.
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Recently, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray had also recalled the arrest of his father and said Maharashtra doesn't appreciate politics of "revenge and vengeance".
"My father was not arrested for corruption or any irregularity, but he was held for protecting Hindus in Mumbai and Maharashtra during the 1992-93 riots," Uddhav had said while addressing Shiv Sena workers in Mumbai.
