Steadfast on its stance to shield the controversial law Minister Somnath Bharti, despite the furor raging against him, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday released a video as evidence to support the Minister who has a knack of getting embroiled in controversies.
The video shows the Ugandan women, against whom the midnight raid was conducted, hiding drug packets, justifying the law Minister’s decision to conduct a raid in the South Delhi area.
Justifying the Minister’s actions, the party’s senior leadership came all out in support of the Minister saying that it was the party’s mistake to not cobble up evidence supporting Bharti’s actions in the public domain and letting the impression prevail that the minister acted on his whims. “I saw the evidence myself.... I admit that the mistake was that we should have cobbled together all the evidence and put it in public domain and let the public view it. I think we allowed the mistaken impression to persist for 4-5 days, which was an error,” party’s senior leader, Yogendra Yadav told a private news channel.
Making its stance loud and clear the footage released by the party was an attempt to justify its unyielding support for Bharti despite women activists, human rights groups and other parties demanding his removal from office. The demands to sack the law Minister from his office have mounted in the last few days after a a Ugandan woman identified him as the one who led a group of AAP workers in attacking their house and misbehaving with them on the pretext of a raid on an alleged drug and prostitution ring in Malviya Nagar area of south Delhi last week. “The concerns of women should be taken care of... In this instance, there is one version given by the African women while there is another version given by the locals. Fortunately in this case, there were four cameras watching all the evidence,” added Yadav.
Asked if Bharti would have been exonerated had the evidence been put out, Yadav said, “Not exonerated. Prima facie actually there is no evidence for all the things that are being put out (against Bharti),” he added, justifying that there have been no double standards on issues relating to Bharti’s removal from office and suspension of police personnel. “An independent inquiry has been ordered by the lieutenant-Governor into the allegations of racism against the law Minister,” added Yadav.