Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Tuesday said his letter to Chief Ministers over wrongful detention of youths in terror cases was for all minority communities and not Muslims alone. “I had sent a circular to all Chief Ministers…This is not a new thing that I have done. Only in the first two paragraphs I used the word Muslim…That is because I had received some representations from them. I used the word minorities in the rest of the letter,” he said at a function here.
Without naming the BJP that had severely criticised Mr. Shinde for the letter, he regretted that some parties read the letter “differently” and in the manner that suited them.
He asserted that his Ministry was concerned over the rights and privileges of people from all communities. “We look at all communities as one,” he said, but noted that there were complaints regarding police’s partisan role in lodging cases against Muslims.
In his letter to all Chief Ministers last week, Mr. Shinde had said that “the Central government has received several representations alleging harassment of innocent Muslim youth by law enforcement agencies…Some of the minority youth have started feeling that they are deliberately targeted and deprived their rights. The government has to ensure that no innocent person is subjected to undue harassment.”
