In an apparent case of moral policing and enforcement of the anti-love jihad campaign, Sangeeta Varshney, the Aligarh president of the BJP’s Mahila Morcha, has been caught in a video that has gone viral slapping and shaming a Hindu girl “seen in public” with a man from another community in Aligarh on Tuesday. Not stopping at that, she later called the father of the girl to the spot and ordered him to slap the girl some more.
The couple was first cornered by members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, who roughed them up and later dragged the two to a police station.
The incident at Naurangabad area of the city comes just four months after Hindu Yuva Vahini activists in Meerut barged into a house in April, dragged out an inter-religious couple and paraded them to a police station through a crowded street, seeking action against the man for “love jihad”.
In the video, the girl is clearly heard telling her tormentors that she is an adult and that the man she was seen with, Mohd Faizan, 32, is her boyfriend. She then reveals that she has been in a relationship with him for the last couple of years.
What apparently infuriated Varshney and others was the girl’s admission that her family did not know about their relationship. Varshney, who also claimed to be Uttar Pradesh head of the Hindu Sena’s women’s wing, said the girl used to frequently come to Naurangabad to meet the man without informing her parents. However, BJP media in-charge in Aligarh, Shailendra Gupta, said Varshney was “earlier the city president of the Mahila Morcha, but not at present”.
On Tuesday, Varshney confronted the girl and after an argument insisted that the latter’s parents be called to the spot. During the argument, Varshney can be seen slapping the girl multiple times for refusing to call her parents.
Varshney admitted that she had slapped the girl as she was with a man from a particular community. “They are not to be trusted,” she said. “Everyone knows the consequences of such relations.”
Deepak Sharma, general secretary of Hindu Yuva Vahini, Naurangabad, who spotted the couple first, told that he had been noticing them for the past three months and when he inquired about them, he got to know that the man was from a different faith while the girl was a Hindu. “We questioned them on Tuesday, when we caught them doing wrong things in public. Then we took them to the police station,” Sharma added.
Aligarh senior superintendent of police Rajesh Pandey said, “The girl’s father did not want to take action against anyone, and took his daughter away. However, a case has been registered under section 294 (indulging in obscene act at a public place) of the IPC against Faizan, who was detained by police on Tuesday.”
The girl’s father, who works at a lock-manufacturing unit, said, “I am a very poor person and I don’t want to get involved in any kind of controversy. I have already apologized to everyone and don’t want to pursue the matter. I was not aware of my daughter’s relationship with the man.”
