Cong, BJP in war of words over lynching

Union minister says such attacks will increase with rise in PM’s popularity, Cong leader Gehlot hits back

JAIPUR: More “lynching incidents will take place” with the “rise in popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”, Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said Saturday, suggesting a conspiracy was at play to defame the BJP and the central government ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year.

“The more popular Modiji becomes, the more such incidents will happen. During Bihar elections, it was ‘award wapsi’; in Uttar Pradesh, it was mob lynching. For 2019 elections, it will be something else. PM Modi gave several schemes, their effects can be seen, this (lynching) incident is just one reaction to it,” he said.

The minister was reacting to the killing of a Muslim man, Rakbar Khan, who was lynched in Rajasthan’s Alwar district by a mob that accused him of smuggling cows late Friday night.

“We condemn mob lynching but this isn’t a single incident. You have to trace this back in history. Why does this happen? Who should stop this? What happened with Sikhs in 1984 was the biggest mob lynching of this nation’s history,” he told reporters in Jaipur.

With Rajasthan going to polls later this year, state BJP bigwigs were quick to condemn the murder that took place hours before party chief Amit Shah landed in Jaipur to address the concluding session of the party’s state working committee meeting.

Chief minister Vasundhara Raje, who had stayed silent for over a month when a dairy farmer Pehlu Khan, also in Alwar, was similarly lynched by a mob in April last year, was quick to speak up this time.

“The incident of the alleged lynching of a person transporting bovines in Alwar district is condemnable. Strictest possible action shall be taken against the perpetrators,” she said in a tweet. “Such behaviour is certainly abhorrent and despicable – and not characteristic of Rajasthan. We shall make all efforts to prevent such instances.”

Rajasthan home minister

Gulab Chand Kataria, who had called the last year’s victim “a cow smuggler” in the state assembly and had backed the police clean chit to the six accused, was also quick to condemn this time.

“We will take strict action against the people responsible for this incident,” he told reporters.

Ramgarh MLA Gyandev Ahuja raised suspicion on “the role of the Alwar police”. “There

is rampant cow smuggling on the Alwar-Haryana border. I have asked people in my constituency not to take law in their own hands. I demand that the government order a judicial inquiry.”

Others, meanwhile, slammed the BJP for the rise in cases of mob violence in the name of cow.

“Any statement from BJP leaders opposing the lynching is hypocrisy. The mob violence has

its indirect support. In Rajasthan, the communal and regional polarisation is BJP’s creation,” political analyst Rajiv Gupta said.

The state Congress slammed the BJP for failing to stop such attacks. “Saddened by news of a man beaten to death in Alwar. Killing of people on “suspicion” is sadly becoming a norm in BJPruled states,” party’s state president Sachin Pilot tweeted.

Congress general secretary Ashok Gehlot termed the incident “horrific”. “For BJP, human life has no value. Criminals guised as vigilantes are roaming freely with out fear of law n order. The PM remains silent on such cases of #lynchings n the State CM orders customary inquiries, wherein actual accused are hardly arrested or punished,” the leader said in a series of tweets.