JAMMU, JANUAY 18: Jammu and Kashmir Congress spokesperson, Deepika Pushkar Nath, has resigned from the party, citing its welcome to Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party (DSSP) president Lal Singh’s proposal to join the Rahul Gandhi led Bharat Jodo Yatra in Jammu.
Deepika said she is leaving the party on ideological grounds as Singh, a former minister, was responsible in sabotaging the 2018 Kathua rape case by “brazenly defending” rapists of an eight-year-old nomadic girl.
Singh, a two-time MP and three time MLA, switched from Congress to BJP in 2014 and was also a minister in the previous PDP-BJP government which collapsed in June, 2018 after the national party pulled out of the alliance.
Several months before the fall of the government, Singh resigned from BJP and floated DSSP following an uproar over his participation in a rally in support of accused in a rape and murder of the eight-year-old girl in Kathua in January 2018.
However, he defended his participation in the rally stating that he was there to “defuse the situation”.
“In view of Ch Lal Singh’s proposal of joining @bharatjodo & @INCJammuKashmir allowing the same, I am left with no other option but to resign from @INCIndia(.) Lal Singh was responsible in sabotaging the Kathua rape case in 2018 by brazenly defending rapists.
“Lal Singh divided the entire region of Jammu & Kashmir to protect the rapists and @bharatjodo is ideologically opposite. On ideological grounds, I cannot share the party platform with such a person,” she wrote on twitter.
A lawyer by profession, Deepika took the parents of the victim to the high court at Jammu for monitoring of the investigation and also guided them to approach the supreme court for seeking transfer of the trial to Pathankot in neighbouring Punjab. (Agencies).
