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NEW DELHI: The BJP on Sunday accused the Arvind Kejriwal-led government of “trying to save” the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape case instead of ensuring justice to her family, as it trained guns at the AAP over “delay” in their hanging.
At a press conference held at the party headquarters here, Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari also condemned the suggestion made by senior lawyer Indira Jaising to pardon the Nirbhaya convicts, and questioned her links with the Arvind Kejriwal government.
Tiwari also referred to Jaising’s representations of the Kejriwal government in the past as he sought to put the AAP dispensation in the dock over her remarks.
The Tihar prison comes under the Delhi government, and the convicts, who should have been informed about the 2017 verdict soon after, were informed two years later in 2019, Tiwari claimed.
“It shows that first the AAP-led government delayed the hanging and now trying to save the four convicts,” he alleged.
And, then Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia holds a press conference to say, “Police is delaying” the proceedings.
“No political party in the country has done something like this as the AAP in stalling the justice for which Nirbhaya’s family has been waiting for eight years,” Tiwari said.
A 23-year-old paramedic student, who came to be known as Nirbhaya (fearless), was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons, including the four death row convicts, before being thrown out on the road.
She succumbed to her injuries a fortnight later at a hospital in Singapore.
Nirbhaya’s father on Saturday had said Jaising should be “ashamed” of herself for suggesting pardon for the four convicts in his daughter’s gruesome gangrape case and said his family isn’t as “large-hearted” as Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.
He also demanded an apology from Jaising, who is known for her stand against capital punishment.
In a tweet on Friday, Jaising had said that while she fully identifies with the pain of Nirbhaya’s mother, she urges her “to follow the example of Sonia Gandhi who forgave Nalini and said she didn’t not (did not) want the death penalty for her”.
“We are with you but against death penalty,” she said.
BJP national general secretary Saroj Pandey and party leader Shazia Ilmi were also present during the press conference.
Pandey also sought to link suggestion made by Jaising to the AAP government and said, “This is the worst form of politics.”
“Jaising herself is a woman, she should have thought a thousand times before making that suggestion. And, people very well know her link with the AAP… We condemn this,” she said.
Nirbhaya’s mother and her family, and the entire country waited for justice for them, but it is being “delayed”, Pandey said.
Ilmi also linked the senior lawyer’s remarks and her prior association with the Kejriwal-led party.
“I also want to ask from the DCW (Delhi Commission for Women) chief too, why is she not agitating after the comments made by Indira Jaising,” she said.
She alleged that the Kejriwal government had “changed the Tihar Jail Manual” and a notice was to given to the convicts when their appeals were rejected by a court in 2017, upholding the sentence awarded earlier.
“That notice was to be given in May 2017 but instead given to them in October 2019. Isn’t that a criminal lapse,” Ilmi said. (PTI)