The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday staged demonstrations across Uttar Pradesh to protest what it called “jungle raj” in the State following the brutal gang-rape of a mother and her teenaged daughter on a national highway near Bulandshahr.
Raising the slogan ‘Maa Beti ke samman mein, BJP maidan mein’, party workers staged protests in several parts of the State, including Varanasi, Ghaziabad and capital Lucknow.
BJP national vice-president Dinesh Sharma and State general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak led the demonstration in Lucknow and Varanasi, respectively.
A delegation led by BJP state chief Keshav Prasad Maurya submitted a memorandum to Governor Ram Naik demanding a CBI inquiry into the gang-rape case. They also sought action against State Cabinet Minister Azam Khan who had termed the incident a “political conspiracy”.
The Bulandshahr gang-rape reminded people of the “jungle raj” and was a blot on the law and order machinery in the State, the memorandum said and added that it brought shame to the State.
The Governor said he was pained with the incident and would sent letters to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav for a CBI probe into incident.
In Varanasi, Mr. Pathak deplored the comments by Mr. Khan and criticised him for “rubbing salt into the wounds of the victims.”
Mr. Pathak, who led protesters at the district Collectorate, asked Mr. Khan to tender an apology to the families, saying the Minority Welfare Minister should be ashamed of his comments as thousands of party workers shouted slogans against the Samajwadi Party-led government.
In Ghaziabad, BJP workers from 17 zones staged a protest outside the Collectorate.
Addressing the workers, general secretary of Uttar Pradesh BJP unit Swatantra Dev Singh said the Chief Minister has adopted a “dual standard” in giving compensation to gang-rape victims.
Mr. Singh said in the Bisahada lynching case the ex-gratia amount was immediately given to the victim’s family while in Bulandshahr gang-rape incident the government “has become deaf and dumb.”
On July 29, a group of bandits had gangraped the woman and her 13-year-old daughter at gunpoint after dragging them out of their car in Bulandshahr on NH 91 when they were travelling with their family from Noida to Shahjahanpur.- PTI
