Himachal legislator booked for murder, on the run

By Indo Asian News Service

Shimla, Dec 22 (IANS) Ahead of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting Saturday to elect Himachal Pradesh's next chief minister, one of the party's newly elected legislators has gone underground after being booked in a murder case.

Ram Kumar Chaudhary, a first-time MLA from Doon constituency in Solan district, is one of the four suspects in the murder of a 24-year-old woman in Panchkula in Haryana Nov 22.

"Police raided his (Chaudhary's) house in Sandholi (near Baddi) and other places today (Saturday) but he managed to evade arrest. He and other accused have not been joining investigations for quite some time," Superintendent of Police S. Arul told IANS.

Arul said arrest warrants against all the four accused, booked under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, were issued Friday.

The murdered woman's father Butti Ram had lodged a police complaint alleging Chaudhary was in touch with his daughter.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court Thursday directed Haryana Police to expedite the probe.

Congress leaders said Chaudhary had not contacted any senior party leader and was unlikely to attend the CLP meeting in the evening.

The government yesterday used lathi-charge, tear gas and water cannons to disperse the people who were demonstrating against the rapes occurring regularly all over India and specifically in Delhi.

The government has further banned these demonstrations by imposing section 144 in Delhi and not allowing the metro rail to stop at 8 stations near the demonstration site.

What can you expect of a government which itself is made up of murderers and rapists.

The following is a report by Association of Democratic Reforms

Crimes against women including rape cases declared by MPs, MLAs and candidates

6 MLAs have declared that they have charges of rape against themselves in their sworn affidavits submitted with the Election Commission of India at the time of their election.

Of these 6 MLAs with declared rape cases, 3 are from SP namely Sribhagwan Sharma, Anoop Sanda and Manoj Kumar Paras from Uttar Pradesh, 1 from BSP namely Mohd. Aleem Khan from Uttar Pradesh, 1 of BJP namely Jethabhai G.Ahir from Gujarat and 1 of TDP namely Kandikunta Venkata Prasad from Andhra Pradesh.

36 other MLAs have declared that they have other charges of crimes against women such as outraging the modesty of a woman, assault, insulting the modesty of a woman etc. Of the 36 MLAs who have declared that they have charges of crimes against women, 6 MLAs are from INC , 5 from BJP and 3 from SP.

U.P. has the maximum number of MLAs (8) who have declared that they have charges of crimes against women, followed by Orissa and West Bengal with 7 MLAs each. 2 MPs, namely Semmalai S of ADMK from Salem constituency in Tamil Nadu and Adhikari Suvendu of AITC from Tamluk constituency in West Bengal, have declared that they have charges of crimes against women, such as cruelty and intent to outrage a woman’s modesty etc.

Candidates

Political Parties gave tickets to 27 candidates who contested the State Elections in the last five years, who have declared that they have been charged with rape.

Of these 7 are Independent candidates, 5 have been given tickets by SP, 2 have been given tickets by BJP, 2 are BSP candidates and 1 has been given a ticket by INC.

Out of these 27 candidates who declared rape charges, 10 are from Uttar Pradesh, and 5 are from Bihar.

Political Parties also gave tickets to 260 other contesting candidates in the Legislative Assembly Elections held in the last five years have declared that they have charges of crimes against women such as outraging the modesty of a woman, assault, insulting the modesty of a woman etc.

Out of the 260 candidates who declared that they have been charged with crimes against women, 72 are IND candidates, 24 have been given tickets by the BJP, 26 candidates have been given tickets by the INC, 16 have been given tickets by the SP and 18 have been given tickets by BSP.

Maharasthra has the maximum number of such candidates (41), followed by Uttar Pradesh (37) and West Bengal (22).

In Lok Sabha 2009 Elections, political parties gave tickets to 6 candidates who declared that they have been charged with rape,

Of these, 1 is from RPP, 1 from RCP, 1 from BSP, 1 from JMM and 2 Independent candidates.

Out of these 6 candidates who declared rape charges 3 are from Bihar, 1 from Delhi, 1 from Uttar Pradesh and 1 from Andhra Pradesh

34 other contesting candidates from the Lok Sabha 2009 General Elections declared that they have charges of crimes against women.

12 out of the other 34 Lok Sabha 2009 candidates who declared that they have been charged with crimes against women, are IND candidates, 4 are BSP candidates and 2 each from AITC and CPI (ML) (L).

Maximum cases of crimes against women are against candidates from Bihar (9), followed by Maharashtra (6), and Uttar Pradesh (5).

ADR and NEW strongly recommend that political parties should stop giving tickets to candidates with criminal backgrounds and who have been charged with serious crimes like murder, attempt to murder, especially crimes against women such as rape.

These are our MPs and MLAs we have who claim they represent the people and take decisions of our behalf.

DO THEY REPRESENT YOU?

NO!

They do not represent me but we had no choice.

In the recent elections in Himachal, the Congress was led by Virbahdra Singh who was accused of corruption.

The BJP was led by Nitin Gadkari who himself was accused of corruption. The poor people had no choice, either BJP or Congress.

Since the BJP was already in power, the people decided to vote for the congress. Choosing one evil over another evil.

However, now the people of India have a third choice -AAP.

Vote for them in the next elections and drive out both the Congress and the BJP and the rest of the motley group of corrupt jokers.