Eleven rapists and murderers of family members of Bilkis Bano, then pregnant survivor of 2002 communal violence in Gujarat, who were convicted by court and given life imprisonment have been released pre-maturely by an order of the Union Home Ministry after a Gujarat government committee approved of the decision to release them. Similarly, recently Maya Kodnani, former minister in Narendra Modi government in Gujarat, Babu Bajrangi and Jaideep Patel, who were accused in the Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam massacres of 97 (including 36 women and 35 children) and 11 Muslims, respectively, were also acquitted by the court. The same Gujarat government wants death sentence for 11 convicts in the 2002 Godhra train burning case whose death penalties were commuted into life imprisonment by the Gujarat High Court. The Solicitor General Tushar Mehta says that there were (25) women and (15) children among the 59 who were burnt alive. Is Bilkis Bano not a woman and was not her little daughter murdered along with other family members? In the new India your religion will determine the treatment meted out to you by the state.
Youngsters and Delhi students Umar Khalid, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, Sharjeel Imam, Khalid Saifi, Shifa ur Rehman are in jail on false charges of having been involved in 2020 Delhi communal riots provoked by a member of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party, because of their participation in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act movement.
Dissenting intellectuals Surendra Gadling, Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Arun Ferreira, Veron Gonsalves, Hany Babu, Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor, Jyoti Jagtap are in jail falsely implicated in a case of violence provoked by right wing activists at Bhima Koregaon in 2018. Father Stan Swamy has died in jail. Varvara Rao, Sudha Bhardwaj, Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde have got bail. All have been booked under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Their only crime is that they are opposed to the Hindutva ideology of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the parent organization of BJP.
Seven women wrestlers, including a minor, have filed cases of sexual assault against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, President of Wrestling Federation of India and a six times ruling party Member of Parliament but the BJP government is not taking any action against him. Rather, the police is harassing the female wrestlers sitting on protest in New Delhi and bundled away the Chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women when she came to listen to the grievances of the wrestlers. Any ordinary offender booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act would have been arrested by now. Compare this with Rahul Gandhi’s crime of defaming Modi and his membership from Parliament being revoked.
Ashish Mishra, son of Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni, who mowed down protesting farmers with his vehicle in 2021 in Lakhipur Kheri in UP, and killed 4 farmers and a journalist has got bail from the court. The father, whose statement provoked the protests, continues to be a lawmaker and a minister.
Bulldozer has become a symbol of governance in Uttar Pradesh where 185 people have been eliminated in extra-judicial killings during staged encounters. Most recent killing of a criminal politician in police custody Atiq Ahmed by assailants masquerading as journalists took place on camera. Enforcement of law against cow slaughter has made life difficult for farmers and inter-religious couples are harassed in the name of a law against forcible religious conversion.
Hindenburg Research found that US $218 billion Adani group has engaged in brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud. Gautam Adani is so close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Modi travelled in Adani’s aircraft when he went as Chief Minister of Gujarat to take oath as PM of the country in 2014. Adani has cornered most of the government contracts in the last 9 years. In 2022 wealth of Gautam Adani increased by 46% and he became second richest man in the world. Rs. 10 lakh crores taken as loans from Indian Banks have been declared as Non-Performing Assets over the last five years. Reserve Bank of India doesn’t know the names of companies which have taken loans. Private companies have donated Rs. 10,000 crores in the form of opaque electoral bonds to political parties of which Rs. 4,000 crores has come to BJP alone. BJP has used money power, manipulation of Electronic Voting Machines with the help of pliant officials and taming of media to win elections. BJP engineered defection in the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra which was in power in an alliance with Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress Party and flew the rebel MLAs to Gujarat, Assam and Goa before the government fell and then a new government was formed by an alliance of BJP and defected faction of Shiv Sena. Most likely BJP either lured MLAs or threatened them with raids by Enforcement Directorate or Central Bureau of Investigation. In a recent judgement Supreme Court has held this entire episode illegal.
India’s 1% population owns 40.5% of wealth whereas only 3% of wealth trickled down to bottom 50% of population over 2012-2021. The state of economy is in shambles with inflation, prices and unemployment rising.
In BJP ruled Manipur in clashes over past weeks between dominant Meiteis and tribal Naga and Kuki communities over a proposal to accord Scheduled Tribes status to Meiteis, close to 60 people have died and 13,000 had to be rescued. Churches, schools, houses, public properties, vehicles and a children’s home have been burned. This is when BJP claims that after it came to power communal riots have stopped. It is suspected that the BJP is interested in exploiting the religious divide to polarize the majority Hindu Meitei voters in its favour as it has been successfully able to do in other states like Gujarat, U.P. and Assam.
It has never been so blatant in India. Religious minorities and dissenters facing exemplary persecution and corrupt, criminal, mafia on the side of BJP being offered unprecedented protection. The BJP has carried on with its dangerous divisive politics on aggressive religious nationalist agenda at the cost of well-being of common people. It has eclipsed democracy and put the constitutional values of liberty, equality, justice and fraternity in the dock.