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‘Bail becomes exception for Muslims’: Congress' Digvijaya Singh targets RSS
Digvijaya Singh compared the RSS's alleged targeting of Muslims in India to the persecution of Jews during Hitler’s regime in Germany.
Joining families of jailed activists, including former JNU scholar Umar Khalid, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Tuesday said bail is rarely granted when the affected party is Muslim.
The 77-year-old politician was referencing a recent Supreme Court's observation that “bail is the rule and jail is the exception”.
During a panel discussion organised by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) to mark four years since the arrest of activists from the anti-CAA-NRC protests, Digvijaya Singh criticised the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
He compared the RSS's alleged targeting of Muslims in India to the persecution of Jews during Hitler’s regime in Germany.
Expressing solidarity with the jailed activists, Singh claimed that he comes from an area where the RSS is referred to as a “nursery.”
“I have always known them closely. They believe neither in democracy nor in the Constitution. The way Hitler made Jews his target, they have made Muslims their target... The way the ideology has infiltrated at every level, it is dangerous for democracy,” PTI quoted Digvijay Singh as saying.
Digvijaya Singh commented that the RSS is an unregistered body with no formal membership or accounts and that they disown individuals if caught as they “did with Nathuram Godse”.
“Bail is a rule, and jail is an exception, then what is the reason that for Muslims, bail becomes an exception?” asked Singh.
Meanwhile, SQR Ilyas, Umar Khalid's father, expressed concerns about the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, under which Khalid and others have been arrested.
“Whether it is Umar or Gulfisha or those arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case... These draconian laws framed inside Parliament are meant to curb terror, but they are used against common people. The BJP brought POTA, the Congress scrapped it, but then brought back all its provisions under the UAPA,” said Ilyas.
He questioned why no action is taken against police officials when a person is found innocent after years of trial. He also criticised the Delhi Police for using names like “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta” for witnesses in the case.
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said that activists currently in jail will one day be recognised as “warriors of democracy.”
“Those arrested during the Emergency were seen as the warriors of democracy, it is the same case today,” he said.
He also said that the anti-CAA/NRC protests at Shaheen Bagh were not merely a protest against the citizenship law but an “equal citizenship movement.”
With PTI inputs
