Veteran Kerala Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala has courted controversy by making an insensitive comment when asked about a rape case involving a health official.
Queried on claims that the official owned allegiance to an employees’ union of the Congress, Chennithala, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, replied with a smirk during a media conference in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday: “Is it written anywhere that only DYFI people can sexually abuse?”
An ambulance driver supposedly belonging to the DYFI, the youth wing of the CPM, has been accused of raping a Covid patient.
Junior health inspector Pradeep Kumar has been arrested on the charge of raping a 44-year-old home nurse who had approached him for a coronavirus negative certificate. Kumar had allegedly asked her to come to his house at Pangode in Thiruvananthapuram to collect the certificate but tied her to a bed and raped her there.
The nurse had been in quarantine after returning from duty at Malappuram in north Kerala, and needed a negative certificate to resume work.
At the news conference, Chennithala accused the Left government of failing to protect the nurse and the Covid-19 patient who was allegedly raped by the ambulance driver at Pandalam in Pathanamthitta district. The driver, V. Naufal, has been arrested.
Health minister K.K. Shailaja slammed Chennithala for his remarks and demanded an apology. “The leader of the Opposition who insulted women should apologise,” she wrote on Facebook.
“Criminals who insult women won’t have a place in the health department,” she added, referring to Kumar and Naufal, also a government employee.
Chennithala claimed he had been quoted out of context.
“It has come to my attention that some sections have been mocking me by taking just one word. It is being circulated as if I told reporters that if it was written anywhere that only DYFI people can sexually abuse,” the Congress leader said in a statement. “What I said was that not only DYFI, but even NGO union (government employees’ union) are sexually abusing,” he added.
