Sharad Pawar hits out at PM Modi over Bilkis Bano case

The NCP chief said he was aghast that while PM Modi on August 15 spoke on the importance of according dignity to women, the tormentors of Bilkis Bano were being ‘shamefully felicitated’

Hitting out at Narendra Modi, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar said he was astonished that for all the Prime Minister’s talk on the need to respect women, perpetrators in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape case were released by the BJP-ruled government in Mr. Modi’s home State of Gujarat.

Speaking in Thane on August 29, Mr. Pawar further charged the Bharatiya Janata Party of running a ‘campaign’ to dislodge non-BJP governments in States by splitting a section of MLAs among ruling parties by either unleashing central agencies against them or luring them by offering positions of power.

“Everyone knows the trauma that Bilkis Bano went through [during the 2002 Gujarat riots] … she was raped, several of her relatives were killed and her child was murdered. The lower court, the high court and the Supreme court all had decreed the sternest punishment to be meted out to the perpetrators which was imprisonment for life. Yet, the BJP government in Gujarat got these criminals released. Not only that, they were felicitated upon their release as well,” Mr. Pawar said.

The NCP chief said he was aghast that while PM Modi, in his Independence Day speech on August 15, spoke on the importance of according dignity to women, the tormentors of Bilkis Bano were being “shamefully felicitated.”

“This is extremely distressing and worrisome. Under the Centre, there has been a daily rise in crimes against women,” Mr. Pawar said.

Last week, the NCP’s ally in the MVA – the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena – had similarly criticised both Prime Minister Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for their silence over the release of the convicts in the case.

“We cry out loud when similar atrocities take place in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh,” the party wrote in its mouthpiece Saamana. “Then where has our sensitivity gone in the case of Bilkis Bano?”