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| "Urine for Ekta Yatris, Hot tea & cigarettes for separatists" | | Home Minister and Chief Minister on the same page | | RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Feb 1: BJP-sponsored Ekta Yatra is over, but the controversy over how the Congress-led NC government in the state and Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre has not died down. In fact, the controversy is gaining more momentum with each passing day. Neither the authorities in the state and at the Centre have thought it prudent to end this controversy, nor have the angry BJP leaders and workers thought is advisable to forget what was done to them by the state government, fully backed by the UPA 2.
The reasons behind the BJP's anger are understandable. After all, the authorities had treated them in the manner enemies are treated. It would be only appropriate to reproduce here verbatim a story on the kind of treatment the authorities in the state accorded to the Ekta Yatris and separatists like Yasin Malik and their cohorts to put things in perspective. It was very depressing and it took us back to those days when the British imperialists used to perpetrate all kinds of barbarities on those demanding political emancipation from the cruel, barbarous and oppressive Britons.
The story read like this: "When separatist leader Yasin Malik and others marched to Lal Chowk with black flags (on January 26), the police offered them hot tea and cigarettes. But we (Ekta Yatris) were arrested for trying to hoist the National Flag. When we asked for water, the police offered us urine."
"Dozen of BJP youth wing workers who have returned to the Capital - with fractured limbs and numerous wounds - narrated the story of brutality unleashed by the Jammu & Kashmir Police in Srinagar on January 26. These youth leaders had to sneak into Srinagar and hide in small groups to continue with the plan to hoist the National Flag at Lal Chowk, after threats by separatists and prohibitory orders by the State administration.
While Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) chief Anurag Thakur and BJP leaders were arrested upon entering Jammu & Kashmir, a couple of youth wing workers made an attempt on January 26 morning to hoist the flag at Lal Chowk."
"KK Upadhyay, an engineer from Gurgaon, was the first who tried. He was beaten up. The next group of workers came as close as 20 metres from Lal Chowk. No sooner did one of them take the flag out of his pocket and wave it, that several policemen pounced on him, snatched away the flag, tore it (the National Flag) into pieces and beat him up, fracturing his left hand in the process."
The arrested BJP activists were forced to take off their clothes in sub-zero temperatures. Third degree torture was meted out. Does Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have any explanation for this kind of an action? He should apologies to the nation," Anurag Thakur, BJYM president, told the paper. Bakshipatra, Rajesh Chowdhary, Mohan Reddy, Suresh Bagashia (office-bearers), Shyantanam Basu (executive member), Jitendra Meena, Virendra S Khinchi, Lokinder Singh Rajawat, Vijay Upadhyay, Vinod Rawat, Bhupinder Chowdhary, Ashok Bhati (from Rajasthan), RP Singh, Shikha Rai, Hiren Mishra (from Delhi), Pradeep Singh Vaghela, Harsh Sanghavi, Alpesh Sashikant (from Gujarat) and Jitendra Gupta (from West Bengal) had to be admitted to a local hospital after they received serious injuries in a police lathi-charge."
"The State Police, Thakur said, not only tortured party workers but also used obscenities against the BJP national leaders. Maintaining that his yatra was a success - as party workers managed to hoist the flag so close to Lal Chowk despite police cordoning off the area - Thakur said his next plan was to reach out to the people, students in particular, and expose the UPA's pro-separatist polices. We have been successful in our endeavor to excite and rejuvenate India's youth into proactively taking the cause of national integration and sovereignty, he said."
This was the kind of treatment that the Ekta Yatris were meted out. It's outrageous. Even more outrageous perhaps is the common cause the Union Home Minister has made with the Chief Minister, who openly challenges the state's merger with India. The Home Minister on Monday complimented J&K Government for "handling the situation tactfully and firmly when BJP attempted to take 'Ekta Yatra' to Srinagar ostensibly to hoist the national flag at Lal Chowk." Are we living in free India or has the Indian State withdrawn from J&K? The answers are not far to seek. Even an apolitical person could draw conclusion. What an irony! Those responsible for the unity and integrity are hobnobbing with those in Kashmir whose single-point agenda is to cause another communal partition and dismember India. |
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