The Maharashtra Congress on Thursday alleged that two of the accused in Palghar lynching — in which two sadhus and their driver were killed — are BJP office-bearers and the party wants to turn it into a communal issue using the media houses which serve its interests.

“The list of booth office-bearers in Gadchinchale village was announced on the official Facebook profile of BJP Dahanu Mandal. The first two office-bearers, Ishwar Nikole and Bhau Sathe, are the 61st and 65th accused in the list of criminals accused of leading and participating in Palghar mob lynching,” said Maharashtra Congress Committee spokesperson Sachin Sawant at a press conference.

He alleged that apart from that, the names of many other BJP members are in the list of those accused for killing the sadhus. “The government will take stern action against all these office-bearers for the heinous murder of sadhus, but wonder why the BJP has not taken action against them yet,” Mr. Sawant said.

“After the Palghar incident, Union Home Minister Amit Shah called Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray but the BJP has not done anything to pass a law against mob lynching in the last two years despite a number of incidents in different States. In one of the lynching cases, the accused in some of the cases were later felicitated by the BJP ministers,” said Mr. Sawant.

SC directive

He said the law against mob lynching was not passed despite direction from a Supreme Court Bench headed by then Chief Justice Deepak Mishra. “In July 2018, the Supreme Court condemned mob lynching and directed the Central government to enact legislation against this heinous act. In addition, 11 guidelines were issued but the Centre did not take any action on them. Then again in July 2019, a Bench headed by the then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi took note of the mob lynching case and sent a notice to the Union government asking what were the measures taken on the previous directives, but the Modi government did nothing,” he said.