Rape protest is sedition and illegal, says Yogi Adityanath.

UP government said tarnishing the state government’s image in the garb of seeking justice for Hathras victim is sedition and illegal.

UP government said tarnishing the state government’s image in the garb of seeking justice for Hathras victim is sedition and illegal.Protests broke out across Uttar Pradesh following the death of a 19-year-old Dalit woman, who was allegedly gang-raped on Sept. 14 in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras. Students, women activists, and political outfits took to the streets and demanded justice for the victim.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who was facing flak and outrage following the incident, claimed that the outrage was a part of an ‘international conspiracy’ aimed at instigating sectarian violence and tarnishing the image of the state. The CM said that ‘anarchist elements’ are trying to trigger communal and caste violence in the state.

Yogi’s remarks came after state police claimed to have busted an ‘international conspiracy’ to foment caste conflagration in the state to defame the Yogi government. This was followed by an FIR by the state police where 19 charges, including ‘sedition’, were listed against unknown people.

The police sources told the New Indian Express that intelligence agencies have ‘indicated alleged involvement of the organizations such as Amnesty International, PFI, and SDPI along with workers and leaders of several mainstream political parties in the conspiracy to tarnish the state government’s image in the garb of seeking justice for Hathras victim’. They also claimed that ‘the evidence of international funding has also come to the fore in this regard’.

However, the opposition termed Yogi’s statement as ‘bizarre’ and demanded a judicial inquiry in the case either by a sitting High Court judge or a Supreme Court judge. The Congress said that the state government has been slapping sedition charges as if these were ‘pick-pocketing’ cases. Addressing a virtual press conference, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that no government ever, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the past had invoked sedition charges in UP after a rape incident, as done by the Yogi Adityanath dispensation.

Though CM Yogi termed the protests that broke out following Hathras case seeking justice for the victim as an international conspiracy and sedition charges were invoked in the FIR; however, he never termed protesting against rape as sedition. Therefore, the claim cannot be termed as true.