New Delhi, Sep 8 (PTI) The BJP on Tuesday hit back at Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi for his remarks over a Manipur musician who was beaten to death here, and asked where he was hiding when Congress leader Sam Pitroda said the people of Northeast looked like the Chinese.
Lashing out at the Modi government over the musician’s death, Gandhi on Tuesday asked what Amit Shah’s Home Ministry was doing to stop this “growing lawlessness” and also demanded a swift investigation into the incident.
The Congress leader demanded that the culprits be brought to justice.
A 54-year-old Manipuri musician, C Vikram Singh, died after a group of delivery workers and dhaba staff allegedly assaulted him when he objected to them drinking alcohol and shouting outside his Kilokari village apartment early Monday, officials said.
Police have arrested seven men and apprehended one juvenile in the case.
Asked about Gandhi’s remarks, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia reacted sharply, “I want to ask a question to this rotten Congress, Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge. When their leader Sam Pitroda said the faces of people from the Northeast resemble those of the Chinese, where did Rahul Gandhi go into hiding?” “Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, every citizen feels secure and takes pride in being Indian,” Bhatia said at a press conference at the BJP headquarters here.
In May 2024, Pitroda triggered a controversy with his remark, “People of the east look like the Chinese and those from the south look like Africans”.
The Congress, however, had distanced itself from Pitroda’s remarks, describing them as unfortunate and unacceptable. The party had said it “completely dissociates” itself from the comments.
In a podcast, Pitroda, head of the Indian Overseas Congress, had said, “We have survived 75 years in a very happy environment where people could live together, leaving aside a few fights here and there.” “We could hold the country as diverse as India together. Where people in the east look like the Chinese, people in the west look like the Arabs, people in the north look like, maybe, white and people in the south look like Africans. It does not matter. All of us are brothers and sisters. We respect different languages, different religions, different customs, different food,” Pitroda had said in the interview, which was widely circulated on social media. PTI PK RUK RUK
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