Mumbai: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on October 20 strongly backed its alley Shiv Sena's chief Bal Thackeray and said the case registered against him for his alleged inflammatory speech was legally unsustainable.

"Though the BJP does not subscribe to Thackeray's views on combating terrorism, it feels that registering an offence against the Sena leader is politically motivated," the party president Venkaiah Naidu told reporters on October 20 after BJP's two-day national level meeting.

Naidu's reply came when his attention was drawn to Thackeray's Dasara rally statement that Hindus should form suicide squads to take on the menace of terrorism.

On Congress demand that Sena should be derecognised for Thackeray's statement, Naidu said the then Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi had stated that, "If the big tree falls, the earth shakes," justifying the killings of innocent Sikhs following Indira Gandhi's assassination.

PTI