Bihar court orders FIR against Giriraj Singh for racist remarks on Sonia Gandhi
Muzaffarpur: A court in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district on Thursday ordered police to register an FIR against controversial BJP leader and Union Minister, Giriraj Singh, for making sexist and racist remarks on Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
The complaint was filed by congress worker Sanjay Kumar Singh in the court of Muzaffarpur Chief Judicial Magistrate Ved Prakash Singh, who transferred the case to the court of Sub-Divisional Judicial Magistrate Anju Singh. The SDJM directed Mithanpura police station to register a case against the minister on the basis of the complaint.
“The court has asked police to register a case under section 166 of the IPC (public servant disobeying law with intent to cause injury to any person),” said Sumit Kumar, lawyer for the petitioner.
The complainant, a resident of Miscote colony of Muzaffarpur, said in the petition that after reading a news report about the racist remark on Sonia he was pained.
On Wednesday, Singh was shown on TV channels asking whether the Congress would have accepted a Nigerian woman (as its president) had Rajiv Gandhi married one. “If Rajiv had married a Nigerian woman, would the Congress have accepted her? If Sonia had not been white, would the party have accepted her?” he asked.
His comments not merely set off a huge row, with not just the Congress but several other parties as well as social activists on a warpath. The Nigerian high commission also stepped in to object to such a racist attack.
The Congress took to streets stepping up its demand for sacking of Singh staging protests in Delhi and also in Bengaluru where BJP leaders have gathered for its National Executive meet. State Congress workers burnt effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister Giriraj Singh demanding minister’s ouster. “The statement shows the kind of politics BJP is doing. The level of the party has gone down,” said Bihar Congress President, Ashok Choudhary.
As the outrage against Singh continued after he kicked up a row with his remarks asking whether Congress would have accepted Sonia's leadership had she not been white-skinned, Singh came under attack even from BJP ally and Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha. "It does not behove a union minister to speak in such a language...it's objectionable remark," Kushwaha, President Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), an ally of BJP, told reporters in Patna.
On Wednesday, Giriraj Singh issued an apology saying his remarks were meant to be ‘off the record’.
When newsmen sought her reaction, Sonia said she would not like to respond to people with "narrow mindset". "I feel it is not worth responding to persons having such a narrow mindset," Gandhi told reporters in Neemuch in Madhya Pradesh where she had gone to survey the damaged crops and meet farmers.
