‘Influencer’ who bragged about ‘opening up skull’ brought to Delhi from Bulandshahr

The detention came hours after the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), the Indian Youth Congress, and Lok Sabha MPs Chandra Shekhar alias Azad and Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav protested at Parliament Street police station in New Delhi.

After more than six hours of negotiations, relevant sections pertaining to The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (SC/ ST Act) were added to the FIR registered in the case.

A senior officer said police would examine whether the charge of ‘attempt to murder’ could also be added to the FIR, as the CJP has demanded.

The officer said police had also received a complaint from the protester saying she had received rape threats from Bhardwaj’s supporters.

Based on the girl’s complaint, an FIR was registered late on Friday evening under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, and for criminal intimidation.

Police claimed they would now investigate who were behind these online rape threats. (The protester’s name is being withheld because she is a minor, and a case has been registered under the POCSO Act.)

Bhardwaj, who describes himself as a “kattar Hindu”, purportedly claimed in a widely circulated video podcast that he had cracked the skull of a protester at Jantar Mantar. He was referring to a scuffle in which the girl’s father, a resident of Ghaziabad, sustained a head injury.

Another video too has been circulating on social media, in which the young protester’s father is seen purportedly claiming that Bharadwaj did not attack him with the intention to kill, before challenging him to a duel.

“We will investigate this video as well, and the claims made in it,” a senior officer said.

On Friday morning, members of the CJP led by its spokesperson Saurav Das and co-convener Ashutosh Ranka marched to Parliament Street police station to demand the arrest of Bharadwaj.

Around noon, when the CJP leaders, along with the protester and her father, were negotiating with police, Nagina MP and leader of the Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) Chandra Shekhar arrived at the police station.

As the crowd of protesters swelled, police erected two layers of barricades to keep them from entering the premises. The protesters sat outside the gates of the police station, raising slogans.

They were later joined by the Independent MP from Purnia Pappu Yadav and Akshay Lakra, president of the Delhi Pradesh Youth Congress.

After more than six hours of negotiations, relevant sections pertaining to the SC/ ST Act were added to the FIR registered in the case.

The girl’s father told reporters outside the police station on Friday that “They (police) have assured us that they will arrest him (Bharadwaj).”

The protester said: “I have not gone to school for weeks. I felt like everyone was judging me. I have also given the police a complaint regarding rape threats to me.”

In the video, Bharadwaj is purportedly seen and heard claiming that despite having attacked the father of a CJP protester, he had managed to stay out of jail due to the intervention of a politician.

He also purportedly boasts in the video that the person he had attacked had to be given 60 stitches and was on the verge of death – and that a case under Section 307 of the IPC, which relates to attempt to murder, should have been registered against him.

Bharadwaj purportedly says that another accused in the case was released from jail the following day, and that he never had to face the law, allegedly because police received a call from the Delhi-based politician who was like his “elder brother”.

In Patna, Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan, one of the politicians whom Bhardwaj had named, said that his name had been “misused”, and called for action against the influencer.

“It is an extremely serious matter that a person (Bharadwaj) is openly admitting that he assaulted someone so badly that the person could have died, and is admitting this openly on a podcast. If there is no action against him even after this, I believe it will set a very wrong example…,” Paswan said.

The Minister said that those in public life meet a range of people. “But that does not mean that the person personally knows that politician,” he said.

It was “absolutely wrong” to suggest that he knew Bharadwaj, Paswan said, adding that his party stood firmly with the young protester and her father.

At Parliament Street police station on Friday, MP Chandra Shekhar, a Dalit leader who is better known as ‘Azad’, said: “We went to the police station because we believe in the Constitution. But if the administration breaks our trust, we won’t stay quiet.”

Pappu Yadav, who sat with the protesters clutching a copy of the Constitution, asked, “Will there be atrocities against our daughters? Will there be atrocities against Dalits? This person is openly saying the minister is his ‘brother’!”