Police say Shaheen Bagh shooter AAP member, party calls it BJP conspiracy
As the photographs were circulated widely on social media,Delhi’s ruling AAP said the Delhi police were defaming AAP on the instructions of home minister Amit Shah ahead of the February 8 assembly polls.
A 23-year-old man arrested for firing two bullets in the air near the Shaheen Bagh protest site on Saturday is an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member who joined the party along with his father, a former Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader, around a year ago, the Delhi Police crime branch team said on Tuesday.
Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Rajesh Deo said Kapil Gujjar and his father, Choudhary Gaje Singh, joined AAP in early 2019 in the presence of senior party leaders.
“Their association with the party emerged when we retrieved deleted photos and videos from Gujjar’s cellphone. In some of the images, Gujjar and his father are seen with AAP party leaders. The two have admitted to being members of AAP,” said DCP Deo, adding that the police were probing if there was a conspiracy behind the shooting.
DCP Deo did not name the senior party leaders, but photographs that surfaced on social media and WhatsApp groups show the two standing with AAP Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Sanjay Singh and the party’s Kalkaji assembly constituency candidate Atishi. Hindustan Times could nott independently verify the authenticity of the pictures.
As the photographs were circulated widely on social media,Delhi’s ruling AAP said the Delhi police were defaming AAP on the instructions of home minister Amit Shah ahead of the February 8 assembly polls.
Singh alleged that it was a “conspiracy” and “another example of BJP’s {Bharatiya Janata Party’s} dirty politics.”
“…there are just three to four days left for the elections. They will release many more videos and pictures. You wait and seen how many more conspiracies they will do. I am surprised that this is being done when model code of conduct is on in the city,” Singh said, adding the party will complain against the DCP with the Election Commission.
“Hundreds of people join the party daily....will first find out what is the status of Gujjar and his father in Aam Aadmi Party,” Singh said at a press conference when asked if Gujjar was an AAP member.
In a press conference, Union minister and BJP’s in-charge of Delhi assembly elections, Prakash Javadekar, said said: “On the one hand, AAP felicitates youths with party caps and garlands and on the other hand it uses them to shoot to create tension…AAP is misusing youth for its political selfishness and is constantly trying to incite violence in the society to get votes, but the people of Delhi have thwarted the conspiracy to incite tension,” Javadekar said.
Delhi chief of the BJP, Manoj Tiwari said that the gunman’s association with AAP shows that the party is trying to orchestrate protests.
“The AAP has been exposed in the Shaheen Bagh case. AAP leader Sanjay Singh had made him(Gujjar) join the party. Sanjay Singh is also a Rajya Sabha member of Parliament. The man who was brought to the party by Singh turns out to be the gunman at Shaheen Bagh. He has been exposed. Why did the AAP plan this conspiracy? People are suffering because of the Shaheen Bagh protest. Arvind Kejriwal has been exposed. The AAP should be punished. There should be an in-depth investigation.”
On Saturday, at around 4.30 pm, Gujjar fired two bullets in the air from a country-made pistol less than 150 metres away from the Shaheen Bagh protest venue, where hundreds of women, men and children have been demonstrating against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act for more than 50 days. Gujjar was caught by police personnel from the spot even as he tried to run away.
As he was being detained, Gujjar was caught on camera saying, “No other community will have a say in this country. Only Hindus will.”
“When Gujjar was arrested, his cellphone was not in his possession. We interrogated him about the cellphone and subsequently recovered it. It was found that the WhatsApp account, videos, and images were deleted from his phone. We retrieved the deleted pictures and videos with the help of technical experts,” said Deo.
Gujjar have told the police that he purchased the pistol during his brother’s wedding seven years ago for “celebratory firing”, the police said.
On Sunday, when HT visited Gujjar’s house in East Delhi, his father Choudhary Gaje Singh had said that he contested the 2008 assembly elections in Delhi as the BSP’s candidate from Jangpura and the 2012 civic body elections from Khichripur ward. Singh had said that currently he was not association with any party or organisation.
Another crime branch team probing the Jamia sedition case on Tuesday said that it had called 11 persons who were known to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholar Sharjeel Imam, arrested for a controversial speech. The 11 persons will be questioned in connection with the December 13 event outside Jamia Millia Islamia where Imam allegedly delivered an “instigating and inflammatory speech” during anti-CAA protests.