At the march, held at India Gate under a heavy security cover, Rahul was accompanied by sister Priyanka Vadra and her husband Robert Vadra.
New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s midnight candlelight vigil to seek justice for the Kathua and Unnao minors is said to have been planned just a few hours before he announced it on Twitter at 9.39 pm Thursday.
Like millions of Indians my heart hurts tonight. India simply cannot continue to treat its women the way it does.
Join me in a silent, peaceful, candlelight vigil at India Gate at midnight tonight to protest this violence and demand justice.
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 12, 2018
Rahul has been vocal on social media about the Unnao minor’s alleged rape by a BJP MLA, but he broke his silence on the Kathua incident at 4.26 pm Thursday, after days of intense media coverage detailing its gruesome nature. In a tweet, he called the assault and murder of the eight-year-old a “crime against humanity”.
Soon after, sources in the Congress told ThePrint, senior party leaders received calls from Rahul’s office to discuss the possibility of a march later that evening. The first calls, they added, were made to veteran party leader Ahmed Patel and Congress’ communication in-charge Randeep Surjewala.
The planning begins
When he received the call around 5.30 pm, sources said, Surjewala was in Bengaluru, just about to address a press meet with an NCP representative to announce the party’s support for the Congress in the upcoming Karnataka elections.
Asked whether the party should hold a midnight march, and how the response was likely to be if it did, Surjewala expressed support for the idea. He subsequently left for Delhi to arrive in time for the march.
The plan was that other leaders should gather at the Congress’ 24 Akbar Road office by 11 pm, with Rahul joining the kilometre-long march at 11.45 and the demonstrators reaching India Gate by 12.
After the plan had been discussed with him, Patel spread the word among other leaders of the party, including Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken, Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev, Congress general secretary Ashok Gehlot, and Rajya Sabha members Ghulam Nabi Azad and Digvijaya Singh. Some of the leaders sitting with Patel at the time were asked to mobilise people for the march.
The party was worried about the crowd, fearing a low turnout would be embarrassing, but the instruction from Rahul was clear, a party leader said: The turnout didn’t matter. “I don’t want to make it a political issue,” Rahul is learnt to have told Congress leaders around 8 pm. “But as a political class (sic), we need to reflect the mood of the country. A tweet here or there is simply not enough,” he added.
“We were told that even if five people show up for the vigil, he (Rahul Gandhi) will hold it. He said it’s not a political rally,” said Dev.
Getting there
But Congress leaders quickly got down to mobilising party cadres and allied organisations such as the Youth Congress and the National Student Union of India. By 11 pm, the party office was teeming with people, as over 3,000 cadres from Delhi and nearby areas turned up.
As they set out, the crowd began to swell as ordinary citizens joined in, spurring a brief chaos at the Akbar Road-Man Singh Road intersection.
Subsequently, Rahul’s aide Kaushal Vidyarthi called up the Congress president’s office with a message: “Take him directly to India Gate. It’s too crowed here.”
And so the march began, led by Patel, Azad, Gehlot, Digvijaya, Maken, Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam, and former union minister RPN Singh. Rahul’s sister Priyanka and husband Robert Vadra came too, and Surjewala reached India Gate directly from the airport. Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi didn’t come for the protest though.
A voice against sexual violence
At the vigil, participants flashed posters with the BJP slogan ‘Beti Bachao’ as Rahul launched a scathing attack on the party for “shielding” the accused in both Kathua and Unnao.
“This brutality, instead of being punished, is actually being shielded. In Unnao an underage girl is raped by an elected representative of the BJP and members of his family. We have seen how her family has been threatened and silenced by the accused,” Rahul said.
“The father of the victim was beaten to death in judicial custody. Only outrage led to action from Adityanath government,” he added.
“What happened in Kathua is beyond humanity; an eight-year-old was kidnapped, brutally raped by many men, including a juvenile, and tortured till she died,” he said. “This defies all human values we have grown with as a society.”
“In both cases, we seek immediate action against the accused, even if it involves those who hold positions of power,” Rahul said.
“This is about our women. Thousands are present here, including the common people and people from all parties. The situation in the country is such today that incidents of murder, rape and violence are taking place one after another,” he added.
“We are here against crimes being committed against women, against rape, violence and murder and the government must act on this. This is a national issue and not a political one,” he said.
Breaking the silence
Before Thursday, Rahul had courted much criticism over his conspicuous silence on the Kathua case, despite weighing in on the alleged Unnao crime. The Congress’ reaction to the barbaric rape and murder had been vague at best, and critics blamed this on the communal undertones being given to the crime and the party’s political calculations in Jammu.
ThePrint also reported Thursday that one of the leading lights of the protest in favour of a CBI probe in the case is senior Congress leader B.S. Slathia, the president of the Jammu bar association, who is known to be close to party veteran Azad.
However, the party was quick to clarify that Rahul had been concerned about the crime since it happened in January.
“It’s not as though Kathua just happened,” Dev said. “In January, I visited Kathua at his instance,” she added, saying the party’s late reaction was not a matter of political expedience.
Asked if Congress’ ties to Slathia were a factor, Dev told ThePrint, “Our demand for a CBI probe is the same as the bar association’s… However, we condemn blocking the filing of the chargesheet in order to make sure the demand is met.” She was referring to the attempt made by Kathua lawyers this week to prevent J&K crime branch personnel from filing one of its two chargesheets. “We can be close to someone, but that doesn’t mean we share their views,” she said.
Azad, meanwhile, distanced himself from Slathia. “Yes, he was my polling agent and Lal Singh (BJP J&K minister, among the protesters questioning the police probe) was in the Congress. But they were secular then,” the MP said. “But BJP has vitiated the atmosphere so badly in J&K that these individuals have now turned communal,” he added.
This fool and his team think like Americans! They believe kissing babies and eating with dalits will earn the clown prince votes! Ha ha ha!
I am a hardcore BJP supporter. I saw the video of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra slamming some folks who were pushing. I have to say, she does give the Iron Lady, motherly, protector vibe. She is fresh and with no baggage. No doubt Rahul Gandhi would lose 2019, but the INC should start building and projecting Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as Prime Minister from 2022 with a victory in 2024.