New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, on Friday responded to a question regarding the plight of families of Delhi Police personnel injured during the July 20 student march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament with a remark, “Are you from the BJP?”
Many families of Delhi Police personnel who sustained injuries during the clashes with protesting students on July 20 held a press conference earlier in the day, recounting their ordeal and personal hardships they underwent during the troubling hours.
They also demanded answers from those politicising the violence in favour of the protesting groups and sought justice for their family.
When a scribe questioned Rahul Gandhi on the Parliament premises, seeking his response to the press conference where the cops’ families shared their complaints and travails, the LoP snapped at him, asking, “Bhaiya, are you from the BJP?”
Rahul Gandhi’s response, seen as insensitive and indifferent to Delhi police personnel, comes after the families shared personal accounts of their sufferings, in the wake of violence inflicted on the injured personnel and questioned why their agony was being overlooked at the cost of protesters, many of whom have a ‘criminal past’.
According to reports, more than 200 police personnel were injured, some of them grievously, when the ‘Sansad Chalo’ march helmed by Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) turned violent, leading to stone-pelting and violence against the police by the protesting groups, which, as reports, were infiltrated by miscreants and those with criminal antecedents.
As the families of Delhi Police personnel injured in violent clashes during the July 20 students’ stir demanded justice in the press conference, the issue also snowballed into a political controversy with Congress and BJP firing salvos at each other.
A noted Opposition leader accused the government of hatching a plot to pit cops against the students to deflect attention from the brutality inflicted on them, while BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned the former’s sensitivity regarding police and their families.
Speaking to the media, Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “The attack on police personnel and the injuries they sustained is a matter where we should show sensitivity. They also have families, they also have children, and they also have human rights.”
“We respect the youth, but if criminals are involved behind such protests and are involved in attacking police personnel, then it raises serious questions,” he stated.
(IANS)
