The lawyer defending the key accused in the Kathua rape case has made a scathing remark at Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti by calling her a “jihadi”.
Ankur Sharma who represents Sanji Ram, the alleged mastermind of Kathua gangrape-murder, and his son, Vishal Jangotra, told The Indian Express that Mufti is “spreading an Islamo-fascist communal agenda for demographic change in Jammu’s Hindu-dominated areas”.
“Mehbooba Mufti is a jihadi…She gives legal immunity to cow slaughter and bovine smuggling. She refers to them (Gujjars and Bakerwals) as tribals, who are Muslims, and says Section 188 RPC (‘disobedience to order’) will not be invoked against them…She is spearheading an Islamo-fascist communal agenda wherein demographic change is a reality, where people of one religion are occupying land in Jammu province, which is a Hindu-dominated area,” Sharma told the newspaper.
The 31-year-old lawyer said he was associated with the Hindu Ekta Manch, the front launched to support the accused in the gruesome rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in January this year. Sharma called the Manch a “peaceful and non-violent organisation” and added that it had to be formed because “people were under an Islamic attack”.
The advocate claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party had “abandoned their political constituency” due to “geopolitical reasons”.
He took on Mufti for a meeting in February where she asked officials that tribals occupying forestland should not be “dislocated” until the government forms a tribal policy. “The order came as a tool for those people to use,” he claimed, adding, “Everybody knows that state land, forest land have been encroached upon only by this community… They are coming from outside and capturing hundreds and hundreds of kanals of land.”
According to the newspaper, a video of a speech delivered by Sharma in March where he called for a boycott of Gujjars and Bakerwals has also surfaced. In the video, Sharma, addressing a rally of Hindu Ekta Manch in March, is purportedly heard saying in Dogri, “We shall take a pledge here and it shall be the agenda of the (Hindu Ekta) Manch also to ensure that we will not sell our land to outsiders. They are working under a plan. So you need to think, and the first thing you shall decide is not to sell your land to them.”
When asked about it, Sharma admitted to having made the speech, where he called upon villagers to boycott the Bakerwal and Gujjar communities and to not sell them land.