Jabalpur: In yet another political attack in the state, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader was assaulted by armed men in Jabalpur, highlighting the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.
Magan Siddiqui, the mandal head of the BJP’s district unit in Jabalpur, was rushed to a nearby hospital after he was attacked with baseball bats and swords in the town on Sunday evening. "As I was returning home on Sunday evening, Hanif, Jhonny and two others stopped me and started hitting me with baseball bats and swords,” Siddiqui said, accusing some Congress workers.
Police have initiated a probe against those named by Siddiqui.
In a separate incident, a relative of a BJP leader was shot dead in Guna’s Piparia village. Parmar Singh Kushwah, a farmer, was killed in violence between two groups in the village known for sectarian clashes. The police have arrested the attacker and seized his weapon.
The incidents come five days after two BJP leaders — Manoj Thackeray and Prahlad Bandhwar — were murdered in Mandsaur and Barwani.
Thackeray, BJP’s mandal head from Barwani, was found murdered at a farm after he went out on a morning walk on Sunday, while Bandhwar was shot dead in Mandsaur on Thursday. Police later arrested one Mahesh Baragi, believed to be a BJP worker, in connection with the murder.
Unimpressed by the investigation, former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan demanded a CBI probe into the murder after meeting Bandhwar’s family. “Is this the Badlav (change) the Congress was talking about? If things don’t improve, the BJP won’t hesitate in taking to streets,” said Chouhan.
Home minister Bala Bachchan, who is facing flak over the murder in Barwani, hit back saying that the Mandsaur incident had exposed the BJP as the “deceased’s close ally has emerged as the killer”.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Kamal Nath asserted that the Congress government was committed to ensuring the safety of every citizen and alleged that those who had turned MP into a state known for crime were now cursing their one-month-old government over law-and-order issues.
Several Congress leaders, including former CM Digvijaya Singh, also said there was a rot in the police system in MP and claimed that in the last 15 years, police officers paid huge sums to grab plum postings and only sheltered and abetted criminals afterwards.
Meanwhile, BJP workers led by senior leaders protested against the murders of their members across MP on Monday. "Public and public representatives are unsafe in Madhya Pradesh," said BJP MLA Rameshwar Sharma during the protest in Bhopal.
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