BJP youth outfit leader held for attack on Rahul Gandhi
The police have arrested one person and detained three on Saturday in connection with the attack on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s car while he was visiting north Gujarat’s flood-affected Banaskantha district on Friday.
The Congress leaders claimed the local party workers had even given names of four BJP workers but the police did not register the FIR, forcing them to stage a night-long dharna in front of the police station.
The Congress on Saturday accused the ruling BJP of ‘murderous’ attack attempted on its vice-president Rahul Gandhi in Gujarat as a ‘pre-planned conspiracy” on Friday when he was touring the flood-ravaged Banaskantha district.
The party is taking the attack very seriously as it has convened an emergency meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Tuesday and its leaders vowed to raise the issue in both the Houses of Parliament that meet on Tuesday after a 3-day recess.
It could have been even fatal, had any of the cement concrete mortars flung at his car hit his head as he was sitting in the front with the rolled-down window, said the party seniors, insisting that the mortar aimed at Rahul rather hit and smashed the window of the rear seat, wounding his SPG (Special Protection Group) guard sitting there.
They must understand that neither could ‘Naturam Godse’s cult nor Modi Bhakts can suppress the Gandhian way practised by Rahul and Congress from their politics of intimidation, coercion and thuggery,” said senior Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Anand Sharma and Randeep Singh Surjewala in a joint statement.
They accused the Centre and the state government of failure to provide security to Rahul despite he being a protectee of the SPG that provides the country’s highest security to the Prime Minister, ex-PMs and Sonia Gandhi and her family.