Rajinder Singh, brother of BJP MLA and former J&K forest minister, is currently evading police arrest in Kathua and cannot be tracked down.
New Delhi: A lookout notice has been issued against Rajinder Singh who was videotaped at a rally a week ago hurling explicit abuses at Jammu and Kashmir CM Mehbooba Mufti. Singh, brother of former J&K forest minister Choudhary Lal Singh, is currently evading police arrest in Kathua and cannot be tracked down.
The Kathua district police headquarters issued a public proclamation Monday offering suitable rewards for anyone willing to provide information on his whereabouts.
According to sources, the Kathua police may also decide to attach, and thereby seize, moveable and immoveable properties belonging to Singh in the event that he does not surrender himself to the police within a stipulated period of time.
As per the procedure, the police will have to move an application under Section 82 of the CrPC before the court in order to proclaim the suspect to be a known absconder.
The brutal gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in January this year, allegedly by a group of six Hindu men in Kathua’s Rasana village, exposed communal cracks in the fabric of the state. While protest marches demanding justice for the victim flooded the streets in multiple cities, the Hindu Ekta Manch, as well as two BJP ministers — industries minister Chandra Prakash Ganga and forest minister Choudhary Lal Singh — were at the centre of rallies defending the accused in J&K.
Choudhary Lal Singh had to resign from his position as forest minister in April after taking part in the said rallies. It was during his brother’s rally on 20 May, protesting the ‘hurt’ caused to the Dogra community by the arrest of the Kathua rape accused, that the shocking footage of Rajinder Singh was recorded.
Singh, the absconding suspect, is seen standing amid protestors with the Tricolour in hand, repeatedly referring to the state’s first woman chief minister as a ‘b***h’.
“Mehbooba k***i, sada beyda gark karita, sada desh lootliya, Modi bhi phasa liya (Mehbooba, the b***h has troubled us, ruined our nation and also trapped Prime Minister Narendra Modi),” he says into a microphone.
According to the notice, Singh is currently evading arrest under section 509 of the RPC (insulting the modesty of a woman) and Section 66/67 (punishment for publishing or obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology (IT) Act.