In what is seen as the height of insensitivity any politican can display, just a day after Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan was asked to leave by the father of slain NSG commando Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, the CM on Monday (Dec 1) told TIMES NOW that had it not been Sandeep, not even a dog would have visited his family.
“If it had not been (Major)Sandeep’s house, not even a dog would have glanced that way.”
This was how Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan heaped scorn today on the family of NSG Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan slain in the Mumbai terror attack during commando operations, igniting a controversy after smarting under the snub from the father of the officer when he went to Bangalore to offer his condolences.
The octogenarian CPI-M leader was turned away from the Bangalore home of Sandeep, a Keralite, yesterday for what K Unnikrishnan perceived as Kerala government ignoring his son’s supreme sacrifice by not making a condolence call in time.
“He (Sandeep’s father) says that the Kerala chief minister did not come whereas the Karnataka chief minister came in the morning itself…and that Kerala has ignored him. He got all worked up over this,” Achuthanandan told ‘TIMES NOW’ in Thiruvananthapuram The chief miniser asked “Is there a rule that the chief ministers of Kerala and Karnataka should be there at the same time?
After a pause, the chief minister went on to say “If it had not been Sandeep’s house, not even a dog would have glanced that way.” “It is Sandeep’s family and that is why we went. A soldier’s father should have had the sense to understand that,” the chief minister said.
But Sandeep’s father said politicians were under “compulsions and duress” to express solidarity with the terror victims in an apparent attemapt to get political mileage and “I did not want to respond to them.”
“Sandeep was a person who disliked anything under compulsion and duress. I am his father, he would have inherited the same thing from me,” Unnikrishnan said, a day after the Kerala chief minister virtually threw him out.
“And having seen from the media, they(Kerala ministers) were under compulsion and duress. I did not want to respond to them,” he said, adding “And people who are protecting him and the police people they assured me that they won’t be coming.”
Unnikrishnan went on to say: ” When I saw them coming again with even my regret not to come, I responded badly, that was my state of mind. that is why I reacted so.” The distraught father however claimed he did not abuse the chief minister nor use filthy words.
“Sandeep was not a regional, not even a national, he was a universal figure. He did not want such a recognition,” he said, adding “I felt very bad that it is under compulsion from all quarters that these two ministers came. So I didn’t allow him. In the proess the chief minister sneaked him. Somebody brought him inside and then I entered the house. I was in a bad state of mind at that time.”
The opposition parties in Kerala have accused the state government of having shown disrespect to the Kerala-born solider by not sending any minister to his funeral, attended by a large number of pople including the Karnataka chief minister on Saturday. them.
On Sunday night (November 30) the slain Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan father, who hails from Kerala’s Kozhikode, remained firm that no politician should enter his house and refused to meet Achutanandan and Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.
Unnikrishnan refused to allow police sniffer dogs into the house when security personnel came there ahead of the Kerala Chief Minister’s visit.
Sources close to Unnikrishnan said he even went to the extent of issuing a threat that he would commit suicide if any politician entered his house. He had told his friends that his son, whose valour was witnessed by the entire country, did not belong to Kerala alone but to the entire nation.
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