AMN / Mumbai
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray today claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the centre was working out a “settlement” with fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. Thackeray said the gangster himself wanted to return to India “to die in his motherland” but the BJP government wanted to show his return as its achievement to secure political gains in the next elections.
“The BJP government will do many such things now ahead of elections. One of these things that I know for sure is that they are in settlement talks with Dawood Ibrahim who is very ill and handicapped and who wants to return to India to die. They will exploit his return in the elections, saying that we got Dawood when so many previous governments failed,” Thakeray said.
Dawood Ibrahim, widely believed to be in Pakistan, is one of the prime accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, and has been declared an absconder.
Thackeray claimed he was the first to suggest Narendra Modi’s name for Prime Minister, even as he used the occasion to launch a broadside on Modi’s nearly three-and-a-half years in office.
“Except for the colour of the currency notes, what has changed in three-and-a-half years? Make in India has failed. Demonetisation has failed. Modi has turned out to be a big hoax and there is no limit to his lies,” Thackeray said. He added that he had supported Modi because he saw the promise of progress in Modi. “But in all these three-and-a-half years, all Modi has done is give empty slogans and organize events,” he said. The MNS chief slammed the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, saying it was a “ploy to break Mumbai from Maharashtra and link it with Gujarat”.
“I do not understand the logic in taking a loan of Rs1.1 trillion to build the bullet train that connects Gujaratis in Ahmedabad with Gujaratis in Mumbai,” he said.