Tathagata Roy scraps tweet saying '26/11 attackers spared Muslims': Meghalaya governor no stranger to courting controversy

On the tenth anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Meghalaya governor Tathagata Roy on Monday stirred up yet another controversy as he claimed that Muslims were not killed in the "Pakistan-sponsored slaughter of innocents".

"10th Anniversary today of Paki-sponsored slaughter of innocents (except Muslims) at Mumbai, popularly called 26/11. Does anyone remember why we did not even downgrade our diplomatic relations with the Pakis (let alone break off such relations or go to war)?," he tweeted.

Later, he deleted his tweet, and said he was wrong on facts. "I was misinformed of the Paki-sponsored killers of 26/11 having spared Muslims. In fact several Muslims were killed. It was a mistake of facts and I am sorry for the same. The relevant tweet has been deleted," he tweeted.

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He deleted the second tweet as well and then issued another apology.

Roy instantly drew flak from netizens over his "factual mistake".

However, this is not the first time he triggered a row because of his comments. In July, Roy — who was the then Tripura governor — said in a series of tweets that Muslims entering India were not refugees because they "faced no persecution in their home countries". He had also said that those howling about the exclusion of people from the Assam NRC were advised to read the definition of the word 'refugee' given by UNHCR.

When Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb was trolled for his claim that internet existed at the time of Mahabharata, Roy was the one who attempted to find logic in Deb's statement. "Tripura chief minister’s observations about the happenings of the Puranic period are topical. It is virtually impossible to conceive of devices like ‘Divya drishti’, Pushpaka Ratha’, etc without some kind of prototype and study thereon," Roy had then tweeted. Roy had also defended vandalism in Tripura when a statue of Lenin was pulled down by BJP supporters in Belonia, just two days after BJP won the election in the state. When someone pointed that the statue was erected by the previous government and the Roy should act against hooligans, he instead justified the act.

Interestingly, after taking over as the Tripura governor in 2015, Roy had said on Twitter there would be "no more political tweets" by him.

With inputs from IANS