Bulandshahr gangrape: Azam Khan sees conspiracy against Samajwadi Party

“Chunav kareeb hai. Samajwadi Party ko badnam karne ke liye aur koi doosra rasta nahi hai. Congress ke zamane me 42,000 dange ho sakte hain. Satta ke liye Gujarat ho sakta hai. Vote lene ke liye Muzaffarnagar, Shamli aur Kairana ho sakta hai toh kuch bhi ho sakta hai. Vote ke liye itna gir jayenge ye shayad Bapu (Mahatma Gandhi) ne socha nahi hoga. Bapu ko to maar hi isi lye diya RSS ki vichardhara walo ne. (Elections are almost here. There is no other way to malign the SP. Thousands of riots took place under the Congress. If, to attain power and votes, Gujarat riots and Muzaffarnagar riots can take place under the BJP, then these parties can do anything for votes. Even Bapu wouldn’t have known that they will stoop so low for votes. This is why those following RSS ideology got Bapu killed),”Khan had said.

Reacting sharply, BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said it was shameful that a senior minister like Khan had made such statements. “If you cannot help the victims, you should not add injury to insult,” Pathak said. He demanded that Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav apologise for the conduct of his colleague and recommend a CBI probe into the incident.

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Senior SP leader and state minister Azam Khan has kicked up a controversy by suggesting that the Bulandshahr highway gangrape could be a political conspiracy against the ruling party ahead of Assembly elections. Later he claimed his remarks were misconstrued.

In Rampur on Monday, Khan had said, “We must also probe whether this controversy is a move by some opposition elements to defame the government. People who want to come to power may stoop this low for political interests.” He was referring to the alleged gangrape of a 14-year-old girl and her mother near Bulandshahr last week.

“Chunav kareeb hai. Samajwadi Party ko badnam karne ke liye aur koi doosra rasta nahi hai. Congress ke zamane me 42,000 dange ho sakte hain. Satta ke liye Gujarat ho sakta hai. Vote lene ke liye Muzaffarnagar, Shamli aur Kairana ho sakta hai toh kuch bhi ho sakta hai. Vote ke liye itna gir jayenge ye shayad Bapu (Mahatma Gandhi) ne socha nahi hoga. Bapu ko to maar hi isi lye diya RSS ki vichardhara walo ne. (Elections are almost here. There is no other way to malign the SP. Thousands of riots took place under the Congress. If, to attain power and votes, Gujarat riots and Muzaffarnagar riots can take place under the BJP, then these parties can do anything for votes. Even Bapu wouldn’t have known that they will stoop so low for votes. This is why those following RSS ideology got Bapu killed),”Khan had said.

Reacting sharply, BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said it was shameful that a senior minister like Khan had made such statements. “If you cannot help the victims, you should not add injury to insult,” Pathak said. He demanded that Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav apologise for the conduct of his colleague and recommend a CBI probe into the incident.

Speaking to The Indian Express from Ghaziabad, the husband of the woman who was gangraped said, “He (Khan) must not have a mother or daughter, which is making him say that the rape of my wife and daughter is a political conspiracy. He has lost his mental balance and must be admitted in the Bareilly mental hospital.”

Apparently in damage control mode on Tuesday, Khan said his remarks were misconstrued since elections were just months away. Claiming that punishment is very important in heinous crimes like the gangrape incident, he said: “They (perpetrators) should be punished every second… If the government is not sensitive enough to these matters, it does not have any right to speak about people. This is a very painful incident, it’s even worse than death…”

“We understand their pain. We cannot change the truth. If we get into more details, more number of people may be involved. This is an insult to the government. Which government will want such an incident?” he said.

SP MP Ram Gopal Yadav denied any laxity on the part of the state government. “You cannot accept that all persons (police officers) have been suspended. What does it mean? Do you expect them to be suspended before the crime (happens)? No one was sleeping,” he told mediapersons.

He also accused the media of being prejudiced towards the UP government, saying: “Why don’t you talk about the girl who was raped and burnt in Delhi? You are never talking about it. You are prejudiced against the Uttar Pradesh government… We have been living here for the past 25 years, are we not concerned?”

Meanwhile, the new SSP of Bulandshahr, Anees Ansari, took charge on Tuesday. He said that charges under POCSO Act have been added in the FIR. He also said that the slide tests to confirm rape would be conducted again.

(With PTI inputs)