In 2016, Rahul Gandhi who was then a Member of Parliament from Amethi, had gone to Una, Gujarat to meet family of Dalit youths who were allegedly beaten up by gau rakshaks. Except, instead of meeting the mother of the victims, Rahul Gandhi met and hugged a ‘fake mother’, a woman pretending to be their mother.
As per reports, Rahul Gandhi had parachuted himself to Una, Rajkot, to meet the victims. While visiting them at Civil Hospital, where they were undergoing treatment, Rahul Gandhi interacted with one ‘Rama Ben’ who was there pretending to be mother of one of the victims.
As can be seen above, Rahul Gandhi entered the ward and immediately met the woman and hugged her. The woman identified herself as the victim’s mother and showed Rahul Gandhi his wounds. However, as it turns out, the woman not his mother. In fact, not only was she not a mother but she was not even a relative of the victim.
Congress planted ‘fake mother’ of Dalit victim
Interestingly, after meeting the woman, Rahul Gandhi had given a media byte how he met the mother of the victim. However, it was later revealed that Gujarat State Congress General Secretary Hemang Vasavada admitted to ‘planting’ the woman as victim’s mother. Rama Ben was ‘planted’ to make Rahul Gandhi’s visit more ‘appealing’. Congress wanted to ‘humanise’ the visit to make Anandiben Patel government look bad.
In fact, as it turned out, she was facing cases of bootlegging, extortion and attempt to murder. She is suspected to having links with bootlegging mafia. Interestingly, Rahul Gandhi, who was an SPG protectee at that time, could meet only those who are cleared by security personnel.
Later, she claimed that she never called herself the victim’s mother. She blamed media for portraying her as victim’s mother.