New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday criticised the government over the alleged attacks on mosques and Muslim neighborhoods in north Tripura on Twitter. Gandhi in a tweet said that the government was ‘pretending’ that there is no problem in the northeastern state.
Rahul Gandhi’s tweet comes after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) took out a rally in north Tripura’s Dharmanagar following which a mosque was allegedly vandalised in Panisagar sub-division and houses of people belonging to the Muslim community were also vandalised earlier this week. Police imposed Section 144 of the CrPC in the area following the events. The VHP was protesting the vandalism of Durga Puja venues and temples in Bangladesh. Police officials familiar with the developments told HT that few members of the VHP were involved in acts of arson.
“Our Muslim brothers are being brutalized in Tripura. Those who do hatred and violence in the name of Hindu are not Hindus, they are hypocrites. How long will the government continue to pretend to be blind and deaf?,” Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday set up a five-member committee to probe into the incidents of violence. The party’s state in-charge Vinod Sonkar said that the committee contains people from minority communities.
“The committee has been asked to visit the (violence-hit) areas and submit its report in the next two or three days. Since our political opponents accuse us of being biased, we asked the members of the minority cell to probe the incident,” Sonkar, a parliamentarian, told HT.
The BJP, however, have blamed the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for stoking violence for political gains. The opposition CPI(M) and TMC attacked the BJP for creating tension among communities and also accused the VHP of flaring tensions. “Few provocative programmes including one at Chamtilla in Panisagar happened, which is condemnable. I appeal to all sections of people to maintain communal unity and integrity,” leader of opposition and former chief minister Manik Sarkar said.