The Madras High Court on Friday told Bharatiya Janata Party MP Shobha Karandlaje that she should either offer a sincere apology or defend herself in the criminal case on her remarks that those involved in the blast in Bengaluru’s Rameshwaram Café on March 1 were trained in Tamil Nadu, The Hindu reported.
The High Court is hearing a petition by Karandlaje, a Union minister, seeking the quashing of a first information report registered against her pertaining to the remark.
At the previous hearing on August 7, Tamil Nadu Advocate General PS Raman told the court that the criminal case against Karandlaje can be quashed if she convenes a press conference and reads out a draft apology prepared by him for the remarks.
On Friday, the BJP MP’s counsel said that Karandlaje has reservations regarding the wordings of the draft apology circulated by Raman.
However, Justice G Jayachandran pointed out that it was just a four-line draft.
The BJP MP’s counsel said that her client had already apologised through her post on social media platform X and added that she will argue on the merits of her plea to quash the first information report.
“You can’t blow hot and cold,” the court said on Friday, reported Live Law. “Either you want to say something, say by it. Or if you’re apologising, mean it. You can’t say you want to contest the case on merits but at a later point.”
On March 19, Karandlaje had said: “People from Tamil Nadu come here [Bengaluru], get trained there and plant bombs here. They placed a bomb in the café.”
She made the remarks during a protest demanding the resignation of Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara after the attack on a shop owner in March for allegedly playing the Hanuman Chalisa, a Hindu hymn, during azaan, the Muslim call to prayer.
Karandlaje’s remark had triggered a political uproar, with Tamil Nadu’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam filing a complaint with the Election Commission in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.
The party said that her remarks violated the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and the model code of conduct. The code is a set of guidelines issued by the Election Commission that political parties and poll candidates must follow while campaigning.
Following this, Karandlaje, who represents the Bangalore North Lok Sabha constituency, had apologised on March 19 saying that her “words were meant to shine light, not cast shadows”.
In a social media post, she also said that she had retracted her remarks.
“Yet I see that my remarks brought pain to some – and for that, I apologise,” Karandlaje said. “My remarks were solely directed towards those trained in the Krishnagiri forest, linked to the Rameshwaram Café blast.”
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