In an apparent attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bhartiya Janata Party, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday that incidents of lynching were unheard of before the BJP came to power in 2014.
He tweeted, "Before 2014, the word ‘lynching’ was practically unheard of. #ThankYouModiJi"".
BJP national spokesperson Amit Malviya reacted to Gandhi's tweet and shared a video of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi while addressing a rally. Malviya wrote, "Meet Rajiv Gandhi, father of mob lynching, justifying blood curdling genocide of Sikhs. Congress took to streets, raised slogans like ‘khoon ka badla khoon se lenge', raped women, wrapped burning tyres around necks of Sikh men while dogs gorged on charred bodies dumped in drains".
The dig at PM Modi came during recent lynching of two people in sacrilege bid in Punjab. Hours after an unidentified man was lynched at the Golden Temple in Amritsar for attempted sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib, another person was killed Sunday morning by a mob at a village gurdwara in Kapurthala for suspected theft and attempted sacrilege.
The killing took place at the Gurdwara Nijampur Mod on the Kapurthala-Subhanpur road amid a three-hour altercation between police and an agitated crowd that refused to hand over the suspect, police said.
Last week, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai informed the Rajya Sabha that there is no separate data on people killed or injured by vigilante groups, mobs or crowds is maintained by the NCRB. He stated that the government has undertaken public awareness exercises to curb the menace of mob lynching.
