PTI
BANGALORE, Dec 1: "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 responded on Monday to 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 angry father of the officer when he went to Bangalore to offer his condolences.
The octogenarian CPM leader was turned away from the Bangalore home of Sandeep, a Keralite, on Sunday 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 minister 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 attempt 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 process 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.