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SDPI Flays Bihar Government for Lack of Action Against Killers of Gulnaz Khatoon

Family of Gulnaz Khatoon protesting along with her dead body outside a hospital in Patna recently. — Photo via WhatsApp

The culprits must be punished and the police which showed negligence and partisan approach rebuked, party’s national vice president demands

Pervez Bari | Clarion India

NEW DELHI — The Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) has lambasted the Nitish-led Bihar Government for following in the footsteps of Yogi Adityanath-led BJP Government in Uttar Pradesh over safety of womenfolk who continue to be raped, murdered and molested.

SDPI National Vice President Adv. Sharfuddin Ahmad, in a statement, vehemently criticised Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for keeping under wraps the incident of three men setting ablaze a young woman Gulnaz Khatoon in Vaishali district of the state. The woman died after fighting for life at a hospital for 15 days.

Adv Sharfuddin Ahmad

According to the SDPI leader, this was done ostensibly so as not to upset Nitish’s apple-cart at the hustings which were on when the gruesome incident took place. The accused are at large even after more than two weeks of the incident.

It seems, Adv. Sharfuddin said, Bihar Govt was vying with the UP Government after the Hathras incident wherein a Hindu girl was raped and fatally assaulted while the state administration in a bid to save the accused cremated her body in a hurry in the absence of her family. The blazing media attention the Hathras incident received with politicians falling over each other to score brownie points put the Yogi Govt. on the backfoot.

However, in Bihar, a Muslim girl was burnt alive after she spurned the offer of marriage from a Hindu youth of the neighbourhood. On social media, citizens have begun calling out the hypocrisy of those who turn such crimes into examples of so-called love jihad if the accused is a Muslim. Not many are saying such things in the Gulnaz case where the victim is a young Muslim girl from a poor family, and the accused are from a dominant caste.

He pointed out that the role of the local police here, too, is suspicious, much like the Hathras case. According to news reports, the police had reached the hospital. Even though they reportedly met the victim and registered her statement, the police did not register an FIR in the case. It was only after the video of the victim giving her statement in hospital pin-pointing the accused went viral, after four days, that the police registered an FIR stating the report.

Adv. Sharfuddin stated that there had been no uproar from any quarter and none had come forward to help the aggrieved family of Gulnaz to seek justice. The national media virtually ignored the case while the ruling BJP-JDU combine had maintained a stoic silence over the issue so as not to mar the celebrations of their electoral victory.

The Opposition parties of all hues have also looked the other way, not even making any ritualistic mention of the incident to express their grief. This incident reveals how Muslim-Hindu divide has penetrated deep into the psyche of society and the administration alike.

Adv. Sharfuddin opined that the ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ slogan raised by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a farce as in BJP-ruled states, women were victims of rapes, murders and molestation incidents but the police and government were mainly concerned as how to hush up the case shamelessly.

“The civilised societies do not have incidents such as this. It is the saddest situation with all the pain and trauma for the victim girl. The culprits must be punished and the police which showed negligence and partisan approach must be rebuked, the SDPI leader said.

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