New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Pragya Singh Thakur, who had obtained bail in the 2008 Malegaon blast case and is exempted from appearing for hearings on medical grounds, was seen playing cricket in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, NDTV reported.
The nearly one-minute video published by NDTV shows Thakur hitting the ball with a bat with remarkable ease as several people cheer on. It was recorded in Bhopal’s Shakti Nagar area, the report said.
In October, the MP was seen playing a round of kabaddi with local players at a Kali temple in Bhopal. Before that, another video of her taking part in a Garba dance during the Navratri festival had emerged.
In January this year, she was granted exemption from physically appearing in a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court after she moved it, citing her difficulty in travelling to Mumbai regularly due to health and security concerns.
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In July, two viral videos of Thakur – in which she’s seen playing basketball and another of her dancing at a wedding – had raised questions on her previous claim that “she is too ill to appear before the court hearing” in the Malegaon blasts case. In the first video, she was seen dribbling a basketball, walking around and scoring a basket.
Thakur spent nine years in jail in 2008 Malegaon blasts case before being granted bail in 2017. As The Wire has reported before, her time in jail too saw her receiving multiple special favours – including being served by other prisoners.
In 2019, the BJP gave her a Lok Sabha ticket from Bhopal and she won the election, defeating her nearest rival, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, by over 3.6 lakh votes.
Six people were killed and 100 injured when an explosive device strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon in north Maharashtra on September 29, 2008.