New Delhi: A group of former civil servants has written an open letter criticising the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government for failing to take action on the killing of a policeman in Bulandshahr and demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
The letter, signed by 83 former bureaucrats on Tuesday, asked citizens to unite in a “crusade against the politics of hate and division – a politics which aims to destroy the fundamental principles on which our Republic is founded”.
“It is a measure of the rapid erosion of constitutional values that we, as a group, have felt a compelling need to speak out as many as nine times in the last eighteen months,” the letter read.
The latest letter follows the December 3 killing of Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh and another man in Bulandshahr following mob violence over alleged cow slaughter. The main accused in the case is a leader of right-wing group Bajrang Dal.
According to the letter, the violence in Bulandshahr was a deliberate attempt to display majoritarian muscle and send a message to the Muslim communities living in the region that they “have to live in fear, accept their subordinate status and conform to the cultural diktats of the majority community”.
“World over, in any civilized society, the killing of a policeman is a more serious offence than any other crime, because it represents an assault on the very basis of that civilisation,” it said.
The letter said the Uttar Pradesh chief minister “refuses to acknowledge the gravity of the incident and its communal intent, condemn the perpetrators of violence or direct the police to take action against them but instead asks them to focus attention on those responsible for illegal cow slaughter”. (PTI)
