Lucknow: BJP on Thursday staged demonstrations across Uttar Pradesh to protest what it called "the jungleraj" in the state following the brutal gangrape of a mother and her teenaged daughter on a national highway near Bulandshahr.
Raising the slogan 'Maa Beti ke samman mein, BJP maidan mein', party workers staged protests in several parts of the state, including Varanasi, Ghaziabad and capital Lucknow.
BJP national vice-president Dinesh Sharma and state general-secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak led the demonstration in Lucknow and Varanasi, respectively.
A delegation led by BJP state chief Keshav Prasad Maurya submitted a memoradum to Governor Ram Naik demanding a CBI inquiry into the gangrape case. They also sought action against state cabinet minister Azam Khan who had termed the incident a "political conspiracy".
The Bulandshahr gangrape reminded people of the "jungleraj" and was a blot on the law and order machinery in the state, the memorandum said and added that it brought shame to the state.
The governor said he was pained with the incident and would sent letters to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav for a CBI probe into incident.
In Varanasi, BJP state general-secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak deplored the comments by Khan and criticised him for "rubbing salt into the wounds of the victims."
Pathak, who led protesters at the district collectorate, asked Khan to tender an apology to the families, saying the miniority welfare minister should be ashamed of his comments as thousands of party workers shouted slogans against the state's Samajwadi Party-led government.
In Ghaziabad, BJP workers from 17 zones staged a protest outside the colloctorate.
Addressing the workers, general secretary of Uttar Pradesh BJP unit Swatantra Dev Singh said Akhilesh has adopted a "dual standard" in giving compensation to gangrape victims.
Singh said in the Bisahada lynching case the ex-gratia amount was immediately given to the victim's family while in Bulandshahr gangrape incident the government "has become deaf and dumb."
On July 29, a group of bandits had gangraped the woman and her 13-year-old daughter at gunpoint after dragging them out of their car in Bulandshahr on NH-91 when they were travelling with their family from Noida to Shahjahanpur.
