BHOPAL: Two days after the head of a private girls hostel Ashwini Sharma was arrested for allegedly raping a hearing and speech impaired tribal girl in Bhopal, the opposition Congress party alleged on Saturday that Sharma had close links with ruling BJP and its parent organization RSS.
The opposition party's state media in-charge Shobha Oza addressed a press conference in Bhopal in the evening, where the party released a video in which Madhya Pradesh chief Shivraj Singh Chouhan is seen patting Sharma's head and back at the Uttarakhand Flood Relief Work office.
Oza alleged that Ashwini is a blue-eyed boy of the BJP leaders as well as the CM and the CM knows him personally. She further alleged that during the 2013 Uttarakhand Char Dham Yatra tragedy, Sharma had handled the relief work. Oza claimed that Sharma had deleted the posts, photographs, comments from the social media (Facebook and WhatsApp) related to the video.
Oza alleged that Sharma's NGO 'Kritarth' is not registered, but was still getting aid from the state government's higher education and social justice departments. The vice president of Congress' state media cell Bhupendra Gupta alleged that Sharma had the backing of some bureaucrats as well as ministers of the state government.
Responding to Congress' allegations, state BJP spokesperson Rajnish Agrawal, categorically denied Sharma having any links with the party, RSS or the CM."Congress is playing dirty politics to defame the CM and our party.
As the CM in the last 13 years, Shivraj Singh Chouhan had met with lakhs of people and blessed them. Should he have first asked them for character certificates before meeting and blessing them or consulted an astrologer about their future before interacting with them," said Agrawal.
The BJP spokesperson also mocked at the Congress' allegations, saying, "I too have pictures and videos in many Congressmen are touching the CM's feet. Does that mean that all those Congressmen had turned Sanghis," said Agrawal.
Aged around 36, Sharma who ran a private hostel for differentially-abled students of Industrial Training Institute (ITI) at a posh residential township of Bhopal, was arrested on Thursday for raping a 19-year-old tribal hearing and speech impaired girl (one of the hostel inmates) since Diwali last year.
Two other speech and hearing impaired girls, who too resided at Sharma's hostel too have registered a case of molestation against him, while a fourth deaf and mute girl, was also in the process of getting a criminal case registered against Sharma at Hira Nagar police station of Indore at the time of filing of this news report.