NEW DELHI/ CHANDIGARH: A political slugfest has erupted over alleged rape and death of six-year-old girl in Punjab. While BJP accused the Opposition leaders of ‘selective outrage,’ the Congress hit back by terming the allegations as ‘political puffery.’
In a horrifying incident the Dalit girl was allegedly raped, killed and then set on fire. Her half-burnt body was found at a home in Tanda’s Jalalpur village, police had said.
The accused, Gurpreet Singh and his grandfather Surjit Singh, have been arrested for the heinous crime, they said. However, not missing the opportunity, the BJP hit out at Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday for their ‘selective outrage’ in cases of atrocities against women. Comparing this incident with the Hathras one, it questioned their ‘silence’ over the alleged rape and killing of a six-year-old girl in Punjab.
Both the Congress leaders had visited the family of a 19-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly gang-raped and cremated without kin’s consent in Hathras in Uttar Pradesh.
Hitting out at the Congress, Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Nirmala Sitharaman said, “The pretentious Congress has not said a word. The tweet-friendly Rahul Gandhi has not tweeted on the Hoshiarpur incident. There has been no outrage. And no picnic either.”
The Congress party should stand up and answer. Does this kind of selective outrage suit the stature of their party? “Why is the brother-sister pair not going and voicing horror in Hoshiarpur? Why not in Rajasthan? The selective cry of outrage that the Congress wants to show when it is elsewhere but not in states governed by it is completely exposed,” Sitharaman said.
Another senior BJP leader and Union minister Prakash Javadekar also slammed the two Congress leaders and asked, “They (the Gandhis) cannot see atrocities against women in the states where it (Congress) is in power.
Neither Rahul Gandhi nor Priyanka went there and nor was there any comment from its president, Sonia Gandhi.”
Meanwhile, trashing all the allegations, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh termed the BJP leaders’ remarks as “political puffery” with no substance or basis to support their criticism.
Singh also rejected the BJP’s attack on his government as well as the Gandhis and said that there was no comparison between the Hoshiarpur and the Hathras case.
The chief minister expressed shock at Sitharaman’s and Javadekar’s remark of ‘picnic tour’ by the Gandhis and other Congress MPs in Hathras, saying it reflected the ‘grossness’ of the BJP’s ‘anti-Dalit and anti-woman mindset’.