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Journalism of Courage
An FIR has been registered against a local woman BJP leader at the Gandhi Park police station here for slapping a girl who was sitting with a Muslim youth in a tea shop here, police said today. The FIR was registered last night under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 504 (insult intended to provoke breach of the peace) of the IPC against BJP’s Aligarh women cell leader Sangeeta Varshney on a complaint by the girl’s father, they said.
Varshney had slapped the girl on Monday evening reportedly for sitting in a tea shop with a young man belonging to the Muslim community. The incident was captured on camera and went viral on the social media. The police had earlier registered a case under relevant sections of the IPC pertaining to obscenity at a public place against the youth. He was arrested and released on bail, police officials said. However, after the video clipping of the incident went viral, there was outrage.
In the video, Varshney is heard saying, “Tere ko samajh mein nahi aataa kaun Hindu hai, kaun Musalmaan hai. Pyaar se samajhaa rahee hoon, samajh hee mein nahi aa raha. (Don’t you understand who is a Hindu and who is a Muslim. I am politely making this clear, but even then it seems that you are not getting it).”
Kalpana Gupta, a womens’ rights protection group activist, charged Varshney with indulging in moral policing and trying to humiliate the girl publicly despite her assertion that she was an adult and had the right to befriend any one of her choice. Amid the outrage, the girl’s father submitted a complaint following which a case was registered against Varshney, police officials said. Some activists had allegedly roughed up the girl and the youth and had later called up BJP women’s cell leader Varshney, according to reports.
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