A story was run on AAP’s Kumar Vishwas and a woman at various news channels since morning. Kumar Vishwas was trending on twitter after that. Here begins the character assassinations of Vishwas and that woman. The story is actually that she had filed complaint with the Delhi Police on March 31 in which she had named four persons, accusing them of maligning her image on social media. When nothing happened, she also registered a complaint with the Delhi Woman’s Commission. The woman has complained about maligning her image by a BJP spokesperson and accused him that he is circulating her photographs on social media.
Defending himself, Vishwas said that the woman, an activist of AAP, registered a police complaint that some persons, including a BJP spokesperson, were “spreading lies” on social media that she had an extramarital relationship. That woman registered complaint 15 days ago, but police have not taken any action yet. She had sent me a mail asking: ‘Kumar bhaiya, what should I do now?’ Thereafter, our AAP’s legal cell asked her to register an FIR in this regard. Vishwas, accused the BJP of running a campaign to malign him. Twitter has been eager to ignore the facts in favour of outrage. It seems, no one has bothered to read the complaint itself. This lack of interest in the facts is doing no favours to the woman, who has filed the complaint precisely to kill the rumours of any sexual relationship. So, it’s all a bit ironic when BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay calls for police action because this “incident has ruined the girl’s family life”.
What Vishwas should do at this point, is entirely up to him. Should he speak up and beg the woman’s husband to come back to her? Should he protest the woman’s innocence as she has demanded? Both options seem a little ludicrous and counterproductive. A denial is not going to get the ‘Twitter khap’ off Vishwas’ back. In any case, whether he keeps silent or speaks out loudly — all over again — the facts will remain the same. There was never an affair or molestation. All it took was a news flash that AAP leader Kumar Vishwas had been summoned by the Delhi Commission for Women over a complaint filed by a female party volunteer. That bit of news immediately mutated into news of ‘illicit relationships’ and even ‘molestation’. The tweets ranged from calls for him to undertake a ‘potency test’ to get arrested by the BJP workers started, because he had ‘ruined a woman’s family life’. There were some news channels with a title, “Kumar Vishwas summoned over illicit relationship charge”.
Between the news channels drama, AAP and BJP supporters were in war of words on social media. Even, two days back Kumar Vishwas and Journalist Sudhir Chaudhary were trending against each other. After being accused of triggering a farmer’s suicide at rally in New Delhi earlier, Vishwas found himself in the midst of a controversy again. Singer Sonu Nigam was also targeted by many, and finally got banned by Zee group on their channels. Nowadays, many AAP leaders are hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons. One particular media lobby is totally against them.
Anyway, the complainant was among several volunteers who had made themselves available for his campaign for the Lok Sabha elections last year in Amethi and has released several pictures as evidence of the same. Both have been summoned by the DCW to get their respective responses. The Delhi Commission for Women has summoned prominent Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas and his wife on a the basis of complaint filed by a woman volunteer of his party, who wants him to make a public clarification that they were not in an “illicit relationship” while campaigning for last year’s national elections. The woman volunteer claims she has been abandoned by her husband after she was falsely accused of having an affair with Mr. Vishwas. This followed rumours, she said, that the AAP leader’s wife found him in a “compromising position” with a woman in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, where he contested election against Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
Anyway, the complainant is a mother of two and a resident of Nand Nagari in North East Delhi. She only requested Vishwas to clarify the rumours in public, to save her married life. Vishwas went all the way to allege media and opposition parties but he did not give any clarifications as demanded by that volunteer. Vishwas responded to questions about the episode by accusing the media at large “working for the Modi Government” and the BJP of defaming him through the episode even as the victim claimed she had been threatened with dire consequences by him and his supporters. The complainant claims that she first approached the Nand Nagari police station, then the deputy commissioner of police (crime) and finally visited Kejriwal’s residence but was denied an audience at each successive step.
Now the question arises here is that why she had filed complaint first of all? Why and on what basis DCW has summoned them? Isn’t it the responsibility of the complainant and Vishwas to prove their respective positions in front of the DCW? Why Vishwas’s name is not mentioned in Police FIR? Still, why action has not been taken against the four others whose names have been mentioned in her FIR?
