Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah on Wednesday demanded that Congress President Rahul Gandhi apologise for coining the term “saffron terror”. Shah said the Congress had linked Hinduism with terror to further its appeasement politics.

The BJP leader was addressing a gathering during his visit to Karnataka ahead of the Assembly elections in the state on May 12. “The Congress party has done the sin to malign the great Hindu culture, which is spreading the message of peace and values to the world,” Amit Shah said. “Rahul ji, terror has no religion. Now the Congress says we never used these words. Many Congress leaders including [Karnataka] Chief Minister Siddaramaiah are on record using these terms.”

Shah said there is evidence showing Congress leaders using terms like saffron terrorism. The BJP leader’s statements follow the acquittal of five right-wing activists including Aseemanand, in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case.

On Tuesday, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra also called for Rahul Gandhi and former Congress President Sonia Gandhi to apologise over the matter, PTI reported. Quoting Wikileaks, Patra referred to a nine-year-old conversation between Rahul Gandhi and former US ambassador Timothy Roemer in which the Congress leader is purported to have said that “the growth of radicalised Hindu groups” may be a bigger threat to India than the Laskhar-e-Taiba.

“If Congress considers India to be its own, then Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi must apologise to the whole country for defaming the great Hindu religion by trying to prove that there was something called ‘saffron terror’,” Patra had said.