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'Bandaru attended Deendar Anjuman meet'

Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad

Andhra Pradesh Home Minister T Devender Goud caused a flutter in the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly on Monday, when he recalled that several Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including Union Minister of State for Urban Development Bandaru Dattatreya, had attended a sarva dharma sammelan organised by the controversial Deendar Anjuman in Hyderabad.

Replying to a discussion on Inter-Services Intelligence activities in Andhra Pradesh, Devender Goud said the Deendar Anjuman was a fanatic Muslim sect founded in 1924 by Siddique Hussain to "Islamise India", with its headquarters at Asifnagar, Hyderabad. In 1948, the erstwhile Nizam of Hyderabad banned it, since its followers were involved in unlawful activities like extortion, dacoity and robbery.

The home minister said that the Deendar Anjuman, found to be involved in the series of 13 bomb blasts at churches and other places of worship in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa from May to July this year, had drawn up a diabolical plan to create chaos and disorder and disturb communal peace and harmony in the country, particularly in southern states.

However, before links of this controversial organisation were unravelled, after the state police achieved a breakthrough in investigations pertaining to the bomb blasts at churches and other places of worship, the Deendar Anjuman created the impression that it was engaged in bringing all religions together by holding conferences.

Religious and political leaders from different communities were invited to these meetings. Sometime back, some BJP leaders, including Dattatreya, had attended one such meeting organised by the Deendar Anjuman in Hyderabad, the minister pointed out.

BJP member R Ravindranath Reddy said the minister's reference to Dattatreya attending a conference was uncalled for, since "many leaders may attend conferences or functions convened by several organisations without knowing their antecedents''.

Devender Goud, however, clarified that he had sought to only highlight how dubious organisations were trying to gain respectability by inviting unsuspecting political leaders.

On another occasion, the home minister intervened when BJP member Dr K Laxman recalled the services rendered to the country by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh so as to rebut allegations by the Congress in the wake of bomb blasts at churches and other places of worship in the state. "The discussion is on the ISI and not on the RSS. Let the member confine himself to the subject," he quipped.

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