Is a criminal case being turned into a political battle by evoking Gujarati sentiment?

New Delhi, Oct 8: Hate politics or threatening people belonging to one community or region by the people of another community or region has a long history. Sometimes they are even given political colour especially when elections are round the corner.

But in the case of some states it has been quite frequent while many other states were relatively peaceful. So the incidence of threat to leave Gujarat was something very unusual as people from north Indian states have been working there from quite long.

States like Gujarat, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Assam, West Bengal, Karnataka and Kerala receive lots of migrants workers. Migrants workers were attacked by terrorists in Punjab and Assam otherwise they were more of less peaceful except one or two aberrations in these state while Maharashtra had the worst track record in this regard.

Reports of alleged political involvement has been indicated in the incidence of Gujarat by the police and some arrests too have been made by the police but there is every possibility of the matter being snowballed into a political hate crime.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar have already spoken to Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani. Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has held RSS and the BJP responsible for it while allegations are being made involvement of Congress MLA Alpesh Thakore in the incidence.

The police have arrested 342 people from various parts of Gujarat so far for allegedly attacking people from north-Indian regions. The girl was raped in Sabarkantha district on September 28. There are information that hate messages are being spread against north-Indians on social media after a migrant from Bihar was arrested. Total Six districts are affected by the violence with Mehsana and Sabarkantha being the worst hit.

People from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh and even Uttarakhand migrate to other states for work. People from the northeastern states too are also spread across the country. There had been incidents in Banguluru in 2012 when nearly 15,000 people from the North-East left for their home states on August 15 and 16 in the biggest ever exodus triggered by Internet and SMS hate campaign against them.

Attacks on migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in Maharashtra had began on February 3, 2008 after clashes between workers of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and Samajwadi Party (SP) in Mumbai took place. Workers of MNS tried to attack SP activists, who were proceeding to attend a rally.

In another incidence Rahul Raj, a 25-year-old man from Patna was killed in the police encounter on October 27, 2008. He had boarded a double decker city bus plying between Kurla and Andheri at Saki Naka stop around 10 am and went to the upper deck. Rahul was protesting against the attacks on north Indian candidates appearing for a railway examination recently. He also wanted to talk to the Mumbai Police Commissioner and media.

The issue was racked up by leaders from Bihar to UP to Maharashtra and spat venom against each other but nothing has happened. The issue was forgotten except the family members who had lost their lad. Similarly politics is being played and Gujarat sentiment is being evoked with the aim of giving PM to chose between his home state and the state he represents in Parliament.