A BJP MLA in Bihar clawed the hand of her niece so ferociously for allegedly plucking litchis from an orchard that blood started oozing out, and later asserted this was “just a trailer”.
A video of MLA Rashmi Varma, who represents the Narkatiaganj constituency and is locked in a long-drawn-out dispute over the erstwhile princely estate of DK Shikarpur, surfaced on Saturday, showing her assaulting and abusing her sister-in-law and niece in an orchard.
Rashmi is one of the heirs of the erstwhile DK Shikarpur estate, around 250km north of Patna. All the heirs are involved in a property dispute for the last four decades.
The video shows a group of around a dozen people, including Rashmi and her two police bodyguards, in the litchi orchard.
Sources said the MLA’s sister-in-law Srilata Varma and niece Aparajita Varma had come there to pluck litchis when Rashmi arrived there with her bodyguards and assaulted them.
The video shows a bodyguard trying to stop the legislator from attacking her relatives, while another is leading Srilata and Aparajita to safety. Other villagers are also seen trying to help the mother and daughter.
However, Rashmi keeps hurling abuses and tries to attack the duo. She picks up litchi-bearing tree branches kept on the ground and hits Srilata and Aparajita with them.
The bodyguards and the villagers lead Rashmi’s relatives to their car. The video shows Rashmi again attacking them. First she assaults Srilata and then lunges at Aparajita and digs her nails into her hand so hard that blood starts flowing.
The two relatives panic at the sight of blood and speed away in the car as Rashmi continues to abuse them.
“This is a gross misuse of power by the BJP MLA. There has been a property dispute between us since 2013. The matter is sub judice. Instead of waiting for the court’s judgment, she keeps assaulting, abusing and sending goons to beat us. She doesn’t want to listen to anybody and does whatever comes to her mind,” Rashmi’s brother-in-law and Aparajita’s father Ashish Varma told The Telegraph.
Ashish said the incident happened on May 22 but he did not register an FIR because the police called it a property dispute and did not do anything.
“The fact that the video shows the bodyguards stopping Rashmi from assaulting my wife and daughter is evidence of her being on the wrong side,” Ashish said.
Rashmi, who is attending a national conference of women legislators at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, told The Telegraph over phone: “This is just a trailer. The full movie is yet to come. I will not stop. I will keep fighting. My relatives have deprived me of my property and I will take it back. Several hundred acres of land and orchards are at stake. My relatives were trying to take litchis from the orchard and I stopped them.”
The BJP MLA said the property dispute had been continuing for 40 years but intensified after the death of Rashmi’s social activist husband Alok Varma in December 2012.
Asked why she did not approach the police or a court instead of taking the law into her own hands, Rashmi said: “Altogether 12 cases are already going on, but nothing is happening. The brothers of my deceased husband are enjoying the property and are depriving me.”
