A 15-member team of Delhi police are on the lookout for Rohit, the son of Rajasthan Minister for Water supply, Mahesh Joshi, who has been accused of rape by a 23-year-old woman. While police search for Mahesh Joshi’s son, who has gone missing, his father is in Udaipur for the Congress’ Chintan Shivir. Mahesh Joshi is considered one of the most-trusted loyalists of Rajasthan CM Chief Minister and Congress senior leader Ashok Gehlot.
The police reportedly visited two residences of Mahesh Joshi but have failed to trace the accused. On not finding him, the cops pasted a copy of the notice on the wall and asked him to appear before them on Wednesday (March 18).
While speaking to India Today about rape allegations against his son, the Congress Minister remarked, “I have been informed Delhi police have arrived in Jaipur. Law should take its course. Truth should come out. A media trial should not take place.”
He claimed that the Delhi police team did not contact him and that he will cooperate with the investigation. He, however, did not answer whether his son Rohit was in Jaipur or not.
The fact that the Congress minister has volunteered to participate in the probe while sitting in Udaipur is rather amusing. This speaks volumes about the mindset of the Congress ecosystem. While the Congress minister’s son has been charged with such a serious crime, his father, who is a member of a party, that has on umpteen occasions mouthed off platitudes on women empowerment, seems to be completely unbothered. This is why, while the police are frantically searching for his absconding son, accused of raping a woman, he is in Udaipur, unperturbed.
Instead of giving priority to the investigation and helping locate his rape accused son, who is busy dodging the police, the Congress leader has chosen to attend the three-day event hosted by Congress to relaunch the party ahead of the crucial 2024 elections.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s “Ladki Hoon, Lad Sakti Hoon” campaign
It doesn’t take an elephant’s memory to remember how many times Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have lectured the world on women empowerment. During the UP assembly polls, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra came up with the “Ladki Hoon, Lad Sakti Hoon” campaign to try and contest the elections on the plank of women empowerment.
But not for a second also, Priyanka considered moves to empower women as women empowerment. In fact, Dr Priyanka Maurya, the state vice-president of Mahila Congress, Uttar Pradesh since 2019 and the face of the party’s women’s manifesto “Shakti Vidhan,” had herself called Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s election campaign- ‘Ladki hoon, Lad Sakti hoon’ a sham. She had said it was a “lollipop” that was given to her by her party which she said, in reality, is anti-women and anti-OBC.
Congress and its sham of women empowerment
There have been umpteen incidents where, contrary to its women empowerment rhetorics, the party has gone on to downright insult women. Last year, on International Women’s Day, Haryana Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda led a protest march against the state government. In his ‘tractor march’, women Congress leaders could be seen manually pulling the tractors.
Congress leader Digvijay Singh had caught the spotlight a few years back when while praising a fellow party secretary, Meenakshi Natrajan at a rally in Madhya Pradesh he referred to her as ‘a 100 percent tunch maal’. (Translated from Bhojpuri, the remark roughly means ‘100 percent sexy woman’.)
Besides, he has on several occasions, made sexist and misogynist remarks toward BJP leader Smriti Irani.
Rahul Gandhi had once commented “Have you ever seen women wearing shorts working in RSS?” without realising the sexist nature of the remark.
Ahead of the 2019 general elections, while addressing a farmers’ rally in Rajasthan, Rahul Gandhi said that the prime minister who boasted of a 56-inch chest did not attend the court of the public, that is the Parliament. “We demolished the Defence Minister’s speech. The prime minister, who has a 56-inch-chest, asked a woman to defend him,” he said.
He had reduced Nirmala Sitharaman, independent India’s first-ever Defence Minister to just a ‘woman’. That a woman gave befitting replies to his lies hurt him so much that he used ‘woman’ as an insult to her. The man who wants to become India’s Prime Minister gets rattled when a woman speaks up.
To quote Rahul Gandhi’s own words, “jab tak mahila chup rahe, kuch bole na tab tak mahila theek hai jaise hi mahila ne muh khola usko chup karvao.”
Asides from all this, in December last year, the Congress party rehabilitated a Congress worker accused of sexual harassment. Congress had reinstated Ranajit Mukherjee, accused of sexual harassment, and made him the secretary of the three key states- Tripura, Nagaland and Sikkim.
Congress and its selective outrage on crimes against women
The party, on the whole, has not been very sympathetic towards rape victims either. In fact, its selectivity in outrage has not been hidden from the public eye. From Hathras to Lakhimpur, the Congress leadership hopped, skipped, laughed, jumped and toppled to make the most of the two unfortunate cases in Uttar Pradesh.
Moreover, the Gandhi siblings left no opportunity to click silhouettes with the victims to circulate in media. They even camped in the state led by the opposition to ‘demand justice’ for the victims. In fact, before Uttar Pradesh went to the polls, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s social media timeline had then been flooded with political gimmicks.
All this, while conveniently ignoring the rise in crime rates in its own ruled state of Rajasthan. OpIndia in November 2021, chronicled the many crimes against women recorded from the Congress-ruled Rajasthan, which the Gandhi scions simply ignored while playing vulture politics over the tragic rape instances that occurred in neighbouring BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh.
It’s dreadful how the Congress party leaders have not only ignored the crime against women in its own backyard but have also taken pride in them. In March this year, during his address in Assembly, Rajasthan Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shanti Dhariwal made an utterly reprehensible comment when he tried rationalising Rajasthan being on the top of the list of states with the highest rape cases. He said the state is at number one in rape cases because it has always been a region of ‘mards’ ‘(manly persons).
Not only that, but Dhariwal’s sexist remarks on sexual assault elicited laughter from his fellow Congress members, who had no qualms in chuckling at claims that attempted to justify the high rate of rapes in Rajasthan rather than speaking out against Dhariwal’s vile justification.
Rajasthan woman alleges Congress minister Mahesh Joshi’s son raped and tortured her
A 23-year-old woman has filed a rape complaint against Rohit Joshi, the son of Dr Mahesh Joshi, the Rajasthan government’s water supply minister. The young woman working for a Rajasthan-based news channel has filed a rape case with Delhi’s Sadar Bazar police station. A zero FIR has been filed in Sadar Bazar police station and forwarded to Sawai Madhopur.
The girl has stated in her complaint that Rohit attacked her and forced her to get an abortion when she became pregnant. The victim stated in her police complaint that the accused raped her multiple times in Jaipur and Delhi. In addition, the victim has reported rape and unnatural sex with her in Delhi.
According to the FIR, Rohit repeatedly threatened the victim in the name of his father. Rohit further stated that he has had contacts with miscreants and the mafia and that he is not frightened of the cops. He warned her about being treated like Bhanwari Devi. The woman claims that the father-son duo poses a threat to her and her family’s lives.
