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Why Rajasthan BJP Muslim worker got expelled, shunned...

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru/Jaipur: Hate speech and disinformation may not invite legal action when it comes from the Prime Minister of the country but opposing the same will get you thrown out of his party as former BJP Minority Morcha leader Usman Ghani found out.

Ghani, the former Bikaner BJP Minority Morcha district president, was referring to PM Narendra Modi’s speech in Banswara, Rajasthan on April 21 wherein he falsely claimed the Congress manifesto spoke of seizing the wealth of Hindus and distributing it among Muslims.

He misquoted former PM Manmohan Singh’s speech from 2006 in the process, branding Muslims infiltrators and a community having “more children”.

Modi followed it up with the same rhetoric a day later in Aligarh, UP.

On April 24, Ghani told a News 24 channel that he was disappointed with the PM’s remarks as a Muslim, adding that his co-religionists didn’t vote for the saffron party citing Modi’s remarks.

He also forecast the party losing three to four Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan among other criticisms. Rajasthan BJP promptly suspended him for six years for “tarnishing the party’s image.”

Ghani arrested

Things went from bad to worse for Usman on April 27 when he visited the Mukta Prasad Nagar police station in Bikaner city to lodge a complaint and got booked and arrested instead.

Cops at the station maintain that Usman got into a heated argument with policemen present at the station and was duly booked under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) 151 (preventing commission of cognizable offences).

While the cops claim he “created a ruckus at the police station” and “breached peace despite being restrained”.

Usman and his brother Moin Khan have refused to comment on the circumstances under which the former was arrested.

On April 30, he was given bail and has maintained silence before the news media since.

The office bearers of Rajasthan BJP Minority Morcha have maintained that Usman should have raised his objections at an “appropriate forum.”