Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur on Monday complained to the city’s women rights panel that she was threatened with rape for her social media campaign against the ABVP.
A student of city’s Lady Shri Ram College, Kaur took on the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad after violence erupted in the city’s Ramjas College on February 22.
However, Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju on Monday wondered who was “polluting” the mind of a Delhi University student whose campaign on social media against the ABVP over the Ramjas College violence has gone viral. The Minister’s tweet attracted opposition flak.
“Who’s polluting this young girl’s mind? A strong Arm Force prevents a war. India never attacked anyone but a weak India was always invaded,” Rijiju tweeted.
Even, going one step ahead of his colleagues another BJP MP Pratap Simha has stoked a controversy when he took to Twitter comparing Kargil martyr’s daughter Gurmehar Kaur to fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. On Sunday evening, he posted a picture collage on Twitter with Kaur on one side and Ibrahim on the other side.
A line above Kaur’s picture reads soldier’s daughter and that above Dawood reads as policeman’s son. The incident developed after Kaur posted in Facebook holding a placard that supported freedom of speech and said that she wasn’t scared of ABVP, which was a start to the ‘Not Afraid of ABVP’ campaign.
Simha taking a jibe at Kaur, manufactured this picture which shows both Kaur and Dawood holding placards, with Kaur’s saying ‘Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him’ and Dawood’s reading ‘I didn’t kill people in 1993, bombs did’. He took another venomous jibe at Kaur where he said “at least Dawood didn’t use his father’s name to justify his anti-national stand”.
The 20-year-old student had posted a profile picture on Facebook holding up a placard saying, “I am a student from Delhi University. I am not afraid of ABVP. I am not alone. Every student of India is with me. #StudentsAgainstABVP”. Her post followed clashes at the Ramjas College last week over Jawaharlal Nehru University student Umar Khalid being invited to speak. The invite was cancelled after activists of the ABVP or Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad allegedly barged in and vandalised the college, alleging that it was anti-national to call Umar Khalid, who was accused of sedition last year.
Kaur met Delhi commission for women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal and complained against the online threats she had received, a DCW official said.
She is yet to go to police but a member of the ABVP, the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP, lodged a complaint that she was molested by two activists of the Left-affiliated All India Student Association (AISA) on February 21.
Police said they had received the complaint but had not registered a separate FIR. The ABVP member’s complaint was made part of the common FIR lodged after February 22 violence.
“This is a completely false propaganda by the ABVP. There is no evidence of such a thing,” AISA leader Aman Awaz said.
