Protesters decry religious profiling of Indian Army officer
Margao Block Congress workers blacken images of Madhya Pradesh minister Vijay Shah during a protest in Margao on Thursday.
Photo Credits: Santosh Mirajkar
MARGAO
The Margao Congress Block on Thursday staged a protest against the statements of Madhya Pradesh BJP Minister Vijay Shah, who reportedly referred to Col Sofiya Qureshi as the sister of terrorists.
Blackening and burning the images of Minister Vijay Shah, they demanded his sacking and immediate arrest.
The protesters stated that the Madhya Pradesh High Court Division Bench judges, Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Anuradha Shukla, deserve to be highly appreciated for taking suo motu cognisance of the Minister’s statements and ordering an FIR to be registered against Vijay Shah.
“It is indeed a disgrace for the BJP that the Hon’ble High Court classified their Minister’s comments as ‘cancerous and dangerous’,” they said.
They added: “The hate campaign of the BJP has been well nailed with the court’s observation that the ‘armed forces (are) perhaps the last institutional bastion existing in this country reflecting integrity, industry, sacrifice, selflessness and unlimited courage with which any citizen of this country can identify’, and that ‘has been targeted by Mr Vijay Shah’.”
Margao Block Congress convenor Savio Coutinho said there could be no bigger humiliation for the divisive forces than the court’s observations that led to the bench making the serious statement that “by referring to her (Sofia Qureshi) as the sister of terrorists, the statement of the Minister has the propensity to give the feeling that irrespective of selflessness and duties of a person towards India, such a person could still be derided only because she happened to belong to the Muslim faith.”
The protesters not only demanded that the MP Minister be sacked but also called for his immediate arrest. “Minister Vijay Shah deserves to be in jail as a criminal, and not as a Minister enjoying luxuries at public cost,” the Congress asserted.
