Maharashtra minister Pankaja Munde on Sunday said that Congress President Rahul Gandhi should be tied to a bomb and sent to another country for questioning the Army’s recent air strike in Pakistan.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader made the statement in the presence of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and BJP state unit chief Raosaheb Danve in Jalna, Times Now reported. Danve is the BJP’s Jalna Lok Sabha constituency candidate.

Munde said the Indian armed forces had conducted the “surgical strike” after an attack on the country’s soldiers. “They [Opposition] say ‘what is this surgical strike and who did it’,” she is heard saying in a video. “Then you should have tied a bomb to Rahul Gandhi and sent him to another country. Then they would have understood.”

Play

Munde was referring to the questions raised by the Congress and other Opposition parties about the Indian Air Force’s air strike across the border in February.

India’s strike on Balakot came on February 26, days after the a Jaish-e-Mohammad suicide bomber killed 40 security personnel in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir.

The Congress has condemned her comments. “The cheap thoughts of the BJP leaders are being proved once again,” Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said. “We do not expect anything less than that from them. Those who label a martyr [Hemant Karkare] as anti-national are capable of going to any extent.”

Sawant was referring to Pragya Singh Thakur’s comments against the former Mumbai Anti-Terror Squad chief Hemant Karkare, who died in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Thakur claimed he died after she had cursed him because he had investigated the charges against her in connection with the Malegaon blasts.