NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul on Friday alleged that the BJP in its “greed for power” is playing with “women’s respect” as well as the self-respect of the country.Gandhi used a video montage comprised of news articles on sexual assault instances to criticise the federal government in a Facebook post. In the video, references were made to incidents like the gangrape of two women in Manipur who were stripped and paraded by the mob, the alleged sexual harassment of female wrestlers by outgoing WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the alleged murder of a woman in Uttarakhand for which the son of a BJP leader was charged, and the release of the defendants in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case. “A nation cannot advance if its women are not respected. The former Congress president said in his post in Hindi that the BJP was “playing with both the respect of women and the self-respect of the country in the greed for power.” Gandhi’s comments come as the opposition continues to criticise the government for how it handled the situation in violent Manipur, where two women were stripped of their clothes and displayed in front of the public naked. The May 4 incident’s video, which was only recently made public, caused widespread indignation and has since become a divisive political issue between the government’s BJP and the opposition group INDIA.
