KOZHIKODE: In a major embarrassment to the BJP leadership, strong reactions are pouring in from senior Sangh parivar leaders against the way the party handled the issue related to Chhattisgarh police’s arrest of two Malayali nuns for alleged forcible conversion and human trafficking. What irked them is Kerala BJP leadership’s posture that their intervention had helped the nuns get bail.
The nuns were arrested on July 25 after the intervention of Bajrang Dal workers and were granted bail by the NIA court in Bilaspur on Saturday. BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar was active in the efforts to get them released from jail.
“We don’t need police and courts. Political leaders who anticipate votes will decide as to who the culprits are,” Swami Chidananda Puri, founder of the Advaita Ashram in Kolathur, near Kozhikode, said in a Facebook post.
Expressing dismay, Hindu Aikya Vedi leader K P Sasikala said withdrawing cases and concluding legal procedure amounted to insulting the legal system. Taking to Facebook, she said there were no godfathers when cases were slapped on leaders including her during the Sabarimala agitations. People like S J R Kumar, T P Senkumar, K Surendran and K S Radhakrishnan faced around one thousand cases at the time, she said. “We didn’t approach anyone to withdraw the cases and will not do so in future too,” Sasikala said.
Senkumar, a former state police chief, was more sarcastic in his remark. “It was the Herculean task of Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar and his team that fetched bail for the nuns. We can expect their help in getting the case quashed,” he wrote on Facebook.
‘If blocking conversion is terrorism, it will be continued with’
Further, he said: “It is the Bajrang Dal that was responsible for all these things. VHP should give proper advice to its youth wing… Give a good reception for pastors and nuns when they come for missionary work.” Senkumar said the way Muslims greet the missionaries should be an example.
“Didn’t you see the respect and love showered on the missionaries when they visited Muslim houses and areas... VHP should teach Bajrang Dal workers they have many things to learn from Muslim brothers,” he quipped.
VHP leader R V Babu told TNIE that both the UDF and the LDF, who were eyeing the vote bank, put pressure on the BJP and the party had no other option.
“It would send a wrong message if the Chhattisgarh government has intervened in the legal course,” he said.
In his Facebook post, Babu said thousands of Jyoti Sharmas (leader of the Bajrang Dal group that detained the nuns) should emerge to block religious conversion and only then will Sanatana Dharma prevail. “If blocking conversion is terrorism, it will be continued with,” he said.