When it comes to courting controversies, the elected representatives in the current BJP government can easily give anyone a run for their money. And election campaigns have always proved to be the right platform, adding food to the fodder. The latest to join the league is Union Minister and BJP leader Uma Bharti. On Thursday, she claimed that she had meted out torturous treatments to rapists during her term as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.
"Rapists should be tortured in front of victims until they beg for forgiveness. When I was the CM, I made them do it," she said in Agra, while campaigning for the Uttar Pradesh elections.
She said when she ordered the police to torture rapists, they cautioned her that such actions were a violation of human rights. “But I replied back by saying human rights are for human beings and rapists are demons. Their heads should be dismembered like the Ramayana's mythological figure Ravana,” she said.
Bharti was criticising the increasing number of rapes and sexual assaults on women in the state, in the backdrop of the Bulandshahr case, in which a mother and her teen daughter were gang-raped.
"They (Rapists) should be hung upside down and salt and chilly should be rubbed on their wounds until they scream. Mothers and sisters should watch so they can get closure," media reports quoted her.
Last year, Bharti had hit headlines when she asked those who questioned the Centre's surgical strikes along the Line of Control to go and live in Pakistan.
(With ANI inputs)
