Rajasthan BJP leader and former MLA Gyandev Ahuja has been booked for hate speech after a video showed him purportedly boasting about the lynching of five people “so far” and giving a “free hand to workers to kill”.
Ahuja, who had once spoken of “3,000 used condoms” having been found on the JNU campus, apparently made the latest comments at a meeting about the August 14 lynching of vegetable vendor Chiranjilal Jain in Alwar on the false suspicion of theft. Seven men from the Meo Muslim community have been arrested for his murder.
“We have so far lynched five people, be it in Lawandi or Behror. This has happened for the first time in this area that they have lynched someone,” Ahuja appears to say in the video, tweeted by Rajasthan Congress president Govind Singh Dotasra.
“I have given a free hand to workers to kill. We will get them acquitted and secure bail.”
Ahuja is a former MLA from Ramgarh in Alwar, a district that witnessed several cow-related killings in 2017 and 2018. The family of at least one victim has accused Ahuja of backing vigilantes who extort money from Muslim shepherds and push them out of the livestock trade.
News agency PTI reported that an FIR against Ahuja had been filed at Govindgarh police station in Alwar under penal section 153A, which criminalises the promotion of enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race and so on, and the commission of acts prejudicial to harmony. Conviction can lead to a jail sentence of up to three years.
Ahuja did not deny the purported remarks to PTI. The BJP distanced itself from the comments.
In 2016, when JNU students were accused of chanting seditious slogans on campus, Ahuja had said without proof: “More than 10,000 butts of cigarettes and 4,000 pieces of beedi are found daily on the JNU campus. Fifty thousand big and small pieces of bones are left by those eating non-vegetarian food. They gorge on meat... these anti-nationals.
“Two thousand wrappers of chips and namkeen are found, as also 3,000 used condoms — the misdeeds they commit with our sisters and daughters there. And 500 used contraceptive injections are also found.”