Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student-activist Shehla Rashid has thanked Twitter users who came out to report singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya’s tweet in which he made some disparaging comments against her.
The singer’s account has been suspended by Twitter.
Ms. Rashid said that the tweet by Mr. Bhattacharya about her was “an ironic defence of BJP leaders against allegations of involvement in sex scandals and other anti-social activities”.
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Recounting the incident, the student leader said: “On May 21 at 8.30 a.m., I tweeted links to news item about the involvement of BJP leaders in a sex racket in Madhya Pradesh, a sex scandal in Gujarat and a link to a story in which BJP leaders, including national general secretary of the BJP Kailash Vijayvargiya, BJP women’s wing leader Juhi Chowdhury and Rupa Ganguly have been named in a child trafficking racket.”
On May 22, Ms. Rashid said she found numerous tweets by her supporters, asking her to take legal action against Mr. Bhattacharya, who had responded to her tweet.
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‘I respect sex workers’
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Ms. Rashid said that her message to the men in BJP who think they can silence her is simple: “Stop trying to silence me by calling me a sex worker. I respect sex workers, but my fight is against those who are trafficking women and children into sex work.”
She added that social media abuse and misogynistic comments by BJP members is not accidental.
Anti-women
“Their entire mentality is anti-women. The BJP wants to replace the Constitution of India with the anti-women Manusmriti, which relegates women and Dalits to second-class citizenship,” she said.
She added that she refused to go to any public debates on this issue as she felt that the issues that should be discussed right now are the Jharkhand lynching and the unabated violence against Dalits in Saharanpur.