Statement taken out of context: Kirron Kher

CHANDIGARH: A day after Member of Parliament (MP) Kirron Kher, who has maintained a silence over the gang rape of a 21-year-old on November 17, said on Thursday that the victim should have been alert before boarding the auto as three men were sitting inside, she claimed that her statement has been “taken out of context and gravely politicised.”

At the press conference on Wednesday at Press Club here, Kirron Kher had said, “I also want to talk about the girl’s alertness… when there were already three men sitting inside the auto, she should not have boarded it.”

Kher tweeted, “I strongly believe that women safety is an enduring and continuous process in our country.” She goes on to say that Chandigarh has “facility for all women who are out late in the night, and cannot find a transport. If a woman finds herself in this position, she can dial 100 and a PCR van is sent to pick her up.”

“I did not say it was the victim’s fault that the assault happened to her, I said it is terribly sad what happened to her, and I wish she had availed the PCR facility instead of getting into an auto rickshaw with the three men. I do not want to delegitimise the gravity of this crime, I want to mention constructive ways a tragedy like this can be avoided in the future,” Kher adds.

Reacting to this, former union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said, “One is aghast to have such a statement from a responsible person like an MP. Gangrape is a very serious matter ... Instead of judging the victim’s decision of boarding an auto occupied by three men, one expected a serious response from her.”