New Delhi:
Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP Saayoni Ghosh has hit out at a BJP leader’s remarks, who was seen offering a Rs 1 crore bounty on her head.
A video of a BJP municipal chairman from Sikandrabad in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district is going viral. The leader, Pradeep Dixit, is seen announcing a reward of Rs 1 crore for beheading Ghosh.
The alleged threat was made over an old social media post by Ghosh regarding a Shivling. Reacting to the threat video, Ghosh posted on ‘X’ that she was “taken aback to see a public announcement offering a Rs 1 crore reward to behead me”.
Tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP President Nitin Nabin and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in her post, the Trinamool Congress MP asked if this was the government’s idea of ‘Nari Shakti Vandan’ in the new Bharat, in a reference to the Women Reservation Bill.
She doubled down on her attack on the BJP pointing out that while the party made women safety a big issue in the recently concluded West Bengal elections, an elected representative from the state was being openly threatened by a BJP leader.
She further sought action by the Kolkata police and UP police against the BJP leader from UP, while the MP thanked her well-wishers and supporters for standing by her and vowed to keep raising issues and speaking freely.
The controversy relates to an allegedly derogatory social media post in 2015 by Saayoni Ghosh, which Hindu groups said hurt the sentiments of the community. Ghosh later claimed that her account had been hacked and the said post was deleted immediately after she regained access of her account.
But the controversy has refused to die down. The post resurfaced during the recent West Bengal elections. A protest over the issue was organised in Sikandrabad on Sunday.
During the protest, a video was recorded in which Pradeep Dixit was allegedly heard saying, “Whoever brings Saayoni Ghosh’s severed head will be given a cash reward of Rs 1 crore from my side.”
However, the BJP leader later denied making the threat, and claimed that the viral video was AI manipulated.