Radical Islamist Congress leader Imran Masood has jumped ship from Congress to join SP just before the UP elections.

As per news agency ANI, former AICC Secretary Imran Masood said, “Current political circumstances indicate that there is a direct fight between BJP & Samajwadi Party in UP… I will hold a meeting with my supporters tomorrow & then seek time from Akhilesh Ji.”

Masood hails from Saharanpur in Western UP and is nephew of five-time Congress Lok Sabha MP from Saharanpur Rashid Masood. Muslims constitute 42 per cent of the population in the region. Masood was considered close to both Nehru-Gandhi siblings, Rahul and Priyanka, so his departure will hit Congress’ revival plans in UP.

Boti-Boti comment

In 2013, a wave of sexual assaults on Hindu girls and women were sweeping across Western UP, which finally exploded in the form of Muzaffarnagar riots when 2 Hindu Jat brothers who went to complaint against the sexual harassment of their sister were lynched by a Muslim mob. Around the same time, Narendra Modi had emerged as the PM face for BJP in the 2014 LS elections.

It is around that time that Imran Masood threatened to chop Modi into pieces (boti boti kar denge), and warned that UP would never become like Gujarat (Modi was CM of Gujarat at the time). The video had gone viral in the run up to the 2014 elections and earned Masood the moniker of ‘boti-boti man’.

Even anti-Hindu liberal media couldn’t deny what the man had said, so they did the next best thing, i.e. offer him a platform to rationalize his comments and present himself as a wronged ‘secular’ man.

Cue this 2016 interview of Masood in the self-avowed cerebral The Hindu, after Congress elevated him to the post of Uttar Pradesh vice-president ahead of the crucial 2017 UP assembly elections.

The Hindu allowed Masood to peddle falsehoods such as “I busted the myth of Kairana exodus — I helped the media outlets expose the lies” without challenging him. The exodus of 300 Hindu families from Kairana town in Shamli district, UP over a period of time did indeed take place as a fact-finding NHRC committee affirmed. As HinduPost had reported at the time –

“It its report, conducted by a four-member team comprising deputy SP Ravi Singh and inspectors Suman Kumari, Saroj Tiwari and Arun Kumar, NHRC found that that over 250 Hindu families had indeed left the town due to fear of the members of a particular community (Muslims) which was in majority in the area.

“At least 24 witnesses stated that the youths of the specific majority community (Muslims in this case) in Kairana town pass lewd/taunting remarks against the females of the specific minority community in town. Due to this, females of the specific minority community (Hindus) in Kairana town avoid going outside frequently. However, they could not gather courage to report the matter to the police for the legal action,” the report said.

NHRC had done an exhaustive investigation into the exodus, examining several independent witnesses, victims, police and administrative officials concerned. The team contacted at least six randomly selected victims/displaced families for verification. They also  had telephonic verification from at least four displaced families who had migrated to distant places like Dehradun (Uttarakhand) and Surat (Gujarat).

The fact-finding team also confirmed the terror of Mukim Kala gang in the region. “The notorious gang leader Mukim Kala had committed at least 47 cases of robbery, murder, dacoity, extortion and violation of the Arms Act during a span of just 5 years between 2010 and 2015, in the states of UP, Haryana and Uttarakhand,” the report said.

The report said the resettlement of over 25,000 members of the minority community in the aftermath of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots had led to a major change in the demography of many towns in the region, including Kairana. “Most of the witnesses and victims feel that the rehabilitation in 2013 has permanently changed the social situation in Kairana town leading to further deterioration of law and order in the area,” the report said.

The predatory targeting of Hindu girls and women continued in Western UP under Akhilesh’s rule till 2017, and stopped only after BJP’s victory that year and Yogi Adityanath became CM. Listen to what this local man had to say to a reporter recently, on how girl’s safety has improved under Yogi:

This is what Jat voters in Western UP has to say !!! pic.twitter.com/PgGo0is09K

— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) November 23, 2021

In the video, the man says that during the SP years, when our sisters and daughters used to travel to Mawana for education, Muslim boys used to grab their breast and ask “tell us, what time is it.” No one dared to take any action. If police acted, they would immediately get a call from Azam Khan (senior Samajwadi leader now in jail for corruption, forgery etc.) threatening the CO (Circle Officer) with a transfer to the boondocks. Today, under Yogi, no one dares to harass girls, whether they are Hindu, Hindu, Buddhist or Christian, the man says.

Mukim Kala, the man who had terrorized Hindu traders in Kairana, was also arrested by UP Police in 2020, and died in a jail shootout last year after a fight broke out among inmates. 

Let’s hope the likes of ‘boti-boti’ Masood get their comeuppance soon, and these desperate last-minute measures to bring the corrupt, communal, thuggish Samajwadi Party back to power are stymied by the UP voter. Any Samajwadi dreams of enacting ‘Khela Hobe’ style violence before or after the polls, like was unleashed by Mamata Banerjee on Hindu voters of BJP in West Bengal, should be squashed at once by Yogi Adityanath.