MUMBAI: Shiv Sena Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut on Wednesday said Veer Savarkar had never apologised to the British.  The statement comes a day after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh claimed that the freedom fighter had written mercy petitions to the British on Mahatma Gandhi's request.

Sharing details before media people in Pune, Sanjay Raut said freedom fighters who languish in jail for more than ten years can adopt a strategy thinking they can do something after coming out of jail instead of remaining inside. He said, In politics or while serving imprisonment, a different strategy is adopted. "If Savarkar had adopted any such strategy it cannot be called an apology. Savarkar might have adopted a strategy. This cannot be called an apology. Savarkar never apologised to the British," Sanjay Raut said.

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Raut, who had demanded Bharat Ratna for V D Savarkar on many occasions, said the freedom fighter, a Hindutva icon, has always been an ideal for his party.

Meanwhile, defence minister  Rajnath Singh on Tuesday hailed Veer Savarkar as a staunch nationalist and India's first military strategist in the twentieth century and said it was on Mahatma Gandhi's request that he wrote mercy petitions to the British and people from the Marxist and Leninist ideology wrongly accuse him as a fascist.