New Delhi: Hitting back at Union Home Minister Amit Shah for accusing him of shielding the ‘tukde tukde’ gang, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday asked why the BJP government has not yet arrested Sharjeel Imam.
Imam, a Ph.D student at Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre for Historical Studies, has been charged with sedition and cases have been filed against him in several states over a speech in which he threatened to "cut off" Assam and the northeast from the rest of the country.
Shah, while addressing a political rally for the Delhi elections in Rithala, asked Kejriwal to spell out if he was “in favour of Sharjeel Imam or not”, to which Kejriwal replied that it was Shah’s duty to arrest Imam immediately.
“Sharjeel spoke of separating Assam from the country. It is very serious. You are the home minister of the country. This statement of yours is petty politics,” Kejriwal tweeted in response to Shah’s poser.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief further asked what was stopping the police, which comes under the central government, from arresting Imam.
“Your duty is that you arrest him immediately. It has been two days since he said this. Why are you not arresting him? What is your helplessness? Or have to do more dirty politics now?” he added.
Imam has been slapped with a sedition case in the national capital for the alleged inflammatory speeches he gave at Shaheen Bagh and Jamia Milia Islamia, a senior police official said on Monday. In the speeches, which have gone viral on social media, he was heard speaking about Assam's possible secession from the country in the wake of the Citizenship Amendment Act CAA.
Later on Monday, the police conducted raids in multiple cities to arrest Imam.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has made issues related to the contentious CAA, which has sparked protests all over the country, central to its poll campaign in Delhi. It has accused both the Congress and the AAP of standing with the protesters, particularly those at Shaheen Bagh, labelling them the ‘tukde tukde’ gang.
Shah, who has repeatedly asked people to press the lotus so hard that it sends a current to Shaheen Bagh, continued with the same theme in his canvassing for votes. He said Kejriwal immediately tweets whenever he talks about issues pertaining to water, electricity, and CCTVs, but would not tell the people of Delhi if he is in favour of sending ‘tukde tukde gang’ to jail.
Earlier in the day, Kejriwal alleged that the BJP does not want to open the Shaheen Bagh stretch of the Kalindi Kunj road where anti-CAA protests have been going on for over 40 days the saffron party is doing “dirty politics” over it.
He said law and order in the national capital entirely lies with the Centre and “if they are saying that they need permission from me, I am giving them permission, open the road in one hour”.
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