Hyderabad is back in the news for all the wrong reasons. After the gut-wrenching gangrape in posh Jubilee Hills area of a minor girl by sons of Muslim MLAs and leaders from ruling TRS & AIMIM, comes another shocking report of sexual harassment and physical assault from Telangana’s capital.
A woman working for a UN (United Nations) organisation had gone to a lounge club of a 5-star hotel in the city with two friends. At 1.30 AM on Sunday, she was assaulted and molested by eight youth who also threatened to rape her to ‘teach her a lesson’. When her friends came to her defense, they too were attacked with bottles. To make matters worse, the Cyberabad police refused to lodge a complaint for several hours. It was only when higher police officials were approached that a case was filed.
Only two of the attackers – Abrar and Saad – were named in a Deccan Chronicle report. One of the youths initially tried to get the woman’s number. When she refused, the 8 of them started harassing her and threatened to forcibly take her out and rape her. The attackers claimed they were ‘very powerful people’ and ‘politcally connected’. Hotel staff also failed to control the assailants. As per one report, the incident took place at ITC Kohenur hotel.
In the Jubilee Hills gang-rape case too, Telangana Police was accused of delayed action. They initially denied the involvement of the son of an AIMIM MLA, and arrested him only after a BJP MLA produced video evidence of his involvement in sexual assault.
Even though Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar Rao’s (KCR) TRS party has a crushing majority in the 119-member Telangana assembly with 103 MLAs, he still appeases the Islamist Asaduddin Owaisi led AIMIM which has only 7 MLAs. AIMIM was founded by leaders of the brutal Razakar milita which carried out a genocidal campaign against Hindus around the time of independence, to fulfill the Nizam’s wish of merging the then princely state of Hyderabad with Pakistan. Although AIMIM is not officially part of the government, it is considered a friendly party by TRS, and KCR himself has praised the last Nizam (a man who wanted to merge with Pakistan!) on several occassion.
TRS has been in power ever since the state of Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014. Many TRS and AIMIM leaders now believe themselves to be above the law and are embroiled in several controversies. TRS leaders’ names have cropped up in cases like the murder of a lawyer at Manthani, alleged suicide of a mother and her son at Ramayampet, suicide of a family at Kothagudem and suicide of a BJP activist at Khammam, in recent years. In March, TRS leader Sheik Shajid Khan was arrested for raping a minor girl after luring her through a woman accomplice. TRS MLA Hanumantha Rao’s aides have been involved in several cases of assault and harassment of BJP workers, including a vicious attack on a lady lawyer.
Unable to rein in his power-drunk MLAs/leaders and Islamist allies, or control the deteriorating law & order situation in his state capital, KCR is meanwhile harboring dreams of a national role and positioning himself as a challenger for the PM’s post in 2024, along with such Opposition ‘luminaries’ as Mamata Banerjee, Rahul Gandhi, Sharad Pawar and MK Stalin.
