Senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan has stoked a controversy yet again with his remark that the brutal gangrape of a mother-daughter duo in Bulandshahr ‘could be a political conspiracy’.
He said the assembly polls are near and opposition parties can “stoop to any level to defame the Samajwadi Party”.
“We must also probe whether this entire controversy is a move by some Opposition elements to defame the government. People who want to come to power may be stooping this low for political interests,” state Minority Affairs Minister Khans told reported on Monday.
The Samajwadi Party government is already facing flak from opposition parties over the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.
On Monday, opposition parties demanded the resignation of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav over the incident and asked him to own up moral responsibility of the heinous crime.
BSP president Mayawati demanded a "personal explanation" from Akhilesh Yadav on whether "he would be able to return to lost honour of the victims".
"There is complete lawlessness in the state for the last four years and the chief minister has not only failed to spruce up the law enforcement machinery but has also failed to protect the women in the state," she said.
Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) chief Raj Babbar said the Bulandshahr incident was yet another blot on UP and sadly showed that there was 'jungleraaj' in the state, be it illegal mining, sale and manufacture of illicit liquor, land grabbing, dacoity, rapes.
"It is complete chaos under the watch of the chief minister," he said.
BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said by merely talking of expressways and better highways, the chief minister was fooling the people and himself too as they were of no use when people travelling on them were unsafe.
"It is yet another sad day in UP. What is more worrying is the fact that neither the women helpline nor the 100 number of the police responded when the victims were calling them in distress" the BJP leader said.
Around six armed men stopped the family car on the Delhi-Kanpur highway early Saturday morning, according to the FIR registered later on Saturday. The armed men dragged the members to nearby fields and proceeded to rape the teenager and her 35-year-old mother. The other members of the family were tied up.
