Kanhaiya Threatened: 'Cut off Kanhaiya's tongue, get rewarded'
First Kanhaiya was threatened with mutilation by BJP youth neta Kuldeep Varshney. Neta Announced a reward of five lakhs to chop off Kanhaiya's tongueo o
The Hindu, NEW DELHI/MEERUT,March 6, 2016
Rewards offered for silencing Kanhaiya
- Wall posters in Delhi offering a reward of Rs. 11 lakh to a person who shoots down Kanhaiya Kumar. Photo: Special Arrangement
- A wall poster in central Delhi offering a reward of Rs. 11 lakh to anyone who shoots JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar dead. Photo: Special Arrangement
Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar’s
speech after his release from jail irked a man so much that he put up
posters across New Delhi announcing a reward of Rs. 11 lakh for anyone
shooting him dead.
In a similar development, the Badaun district president of the Bharatiya
Janata Yuva Morcha, Kuldip Varshney, announced a reward of Rs. 5 lakh
for anyone cutting off Kanhaiya’s tongue.
While the BJP distanced itself from Varshney’s offer and expelled him
for six years, the Delhi Police deemed it fit to ignore the contents of
the posters and booked the man for defacement of property. “We will
analyse what is on the posters and add more Sections of the IPC if
required,” a police officer told The Hindu.
Man behind posters claims links with RSS, ABVP
Adarsh Sharma, president of the little-known Purvanchal Sena, made no
efforts to conceal the fact that he was the man behind the posters,
which carried his name and phone number. He also posed with a poster in
front of journalists. Speaking to The Hindu, Sharma claimed a long association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
A case under the Delhi Prevention of Defacement of Property Act has been
filed against him at the Parliament Street police station. It attracts
one year in jail or Rs. 50,000 in fine or both.
o o o
New Delhi, March 6, 2016
‘As Kanhaiya spoke, my blood boiled, I decided he must die’
- Adarsh Sharma holds up one of his posters that promises a Rs. 11 lakh reward for killing student leader Kanhaiya Kumar.Photo: special arrangement
- The 'bounty' posters were seen across central Delhi on Saturday.
Purvanchal Sena president Adarsh Sharma says he will pay the Rs. 11 lakh bounty with the help of contributions from the “people of the country”
He has just received a call from a senior police officer to visit the
Parliament Street police station for questioning, but that does not
deter Adarsh Sharma from proudly posing with a poster announcing a
reward of Rs. 11 lakh for anyone that shoots student leader Kanhaiya
Kumar.
Flanked by two supporters and an advocate, the Purvanchal Sena president
announces that he is not scared of going to jail for endangering Mr.
Kanhaiya’s life. “I can’t say about the court or the media, but in my
eyes Kanhaiya has committed a grave mistake and he needs to die for
that,” says Sharma, as he roams around Connaught Place with his posters.
“Kanhaiya’s speech after his release incited me. Who gets so much
coverage of TV’s prime time? As he spoke, my blood boiled and I decided
that he has to be shot,” Sharma tells The Hindu .
Mr. Sharma claims to have Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,200 respectively in his two
bank accounts. Asked how he will pay the Rs. 11 lakh bounty, Mr. Sharma
replies undeterred: “I will collect funds from the people of this
country.”
Asked if the reward was merely an attention-seeking stunt, Mr Sharma
says: “Call it what you want. Mr. Kanhaiya has brought disrepute to
Bihar and I am going to correct that.” Mr Sharma’s native village is in
Barhaiya in Bihar, not very far from Kanhaiya’s village in Begusarai
district.
The 30-year-old says he spent the intervening night of Friday and
Saturday sticking hundreds of posters in the city. “I hired an auto and
the driver helped me with this task,” he says.
Ironically, he wants to file a police complaint for “threat calls”.
“Ever since I put up the posters, I have been receiving threat calls
from some foreign phone numbers,” he says.
While speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Sharma gets a call from a journalist.
It begins on a mild note, but he begins to lose his temper on being
apparently asked unpleasant questions. Within seconds his speech turns
incoherent as he resorts to threateningly convey to the caller that he
is right in announcing the reward.
Mr. Sharma, who claims to have been a RSS member and an ABVP
office-bearer till some years ago, says he is going to pay Mr. Kanhaiya
in “instalments” and that the award was the first of those. “What I am
doing is similar to what Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose did. Mr.
Kanhaiya is imitating the Maoists,” he says.
Having done his higher education in journalism, Sharma worked in the
copy editing department of a newspaper in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur for a
while. “I did not like the food and the air in Raipur, so I quit that
job. I then founded the Purvanchal Sena in 2014,” he says.
He claims that his organisation has “thousands” of members.
