A 2006 sex scandal has returned to haunt the Congress-led government in Jammu and Kashmir in the election year.
SRINAGAR: A 2006 sex scandal has returned to haunt the Congress-led government in Jammu and Kashmir in the election year.
Senior party leader and MP from Jammu-Poonch Madan Lal Sharma dropped a bomb on Monday when he claimed assembly speaker Tara Chand was involved in the scam.
Comparing the speaker to jailed (for murder) former RJD MP from Bihar Pappu Yadav, Sharma said, “Tara Chand should be jailed as well. We fell at the feet of the Congress president and chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad to remove him from the list (of accused).”
Tara Chand, however, put the ball in the party high command’s court, saying, “I leave it to the Pradesh Congress Committee president, the chief minister and Sonia Gandhi.”
The scandal was unearthed in February 2006 when Shaheed Ganj Police seized a CD containing a porn clip of a 15-year-old girl here. She named former ministers GA Mir and Raman Mattoo, DIG BSF, DSPs Mohd Yousuf Mir and Mohd Ashraf and senior IAS officer Iqbal Khanday as being part of the racket and one Sabeena as the kingpin.
The state government handed over the case to the CBI, which arrested all the accused. Later, the case was shifted to Chandigarh where the accused were granted bail.
In October last year, the J&K high court told the chief judicial magistrate to initiate proceedings against another 12 high-profile people, including transport minister Hakeem Yasin, Congress MLA and former minister Yogesh Swahney, PDP MLA and former minister Ghulam Hassan Khan, SP of central intelligence Kashmir Ashkoor Wani and another SP Sheikh Mehmood.
The Congress, which weathered the earlier storm, is now struggling as the attack this time is not from the opposition but from within.
Playing down the latest allegation, chief minister Azad said, “You talk of the government and darbar (the age-old tradition of shifting the civil secretariat and other government offices to Jammu in winter and reopening in Srinagar in summer). I have no time for stupid issues.”
Minutes later, a party spokesman denied that Sharma had approached the chief minister and Sonia Gandhi to save the skin of Chand.
“There is no question of the MP having approached the chief minister or the UPA chairperson on this issue or the government trying to protect any accused in the scandal. The government wanted a fair probe into the scandal and accordingly, handed over the case to the country’s premier investigating agency, the CBI. If the government wanted to protect the accused, it would have itself probed the case,” the spokesman said.
“The Srinagar sex scandal is pending before the honorable high courts of J&K and Punjab and Haryana. The matter is subjudice,” he added.
However, the damage seems to have been already done with the opposition taking to streets and burning effigies of Sonia Gandhi in Jammu. With elections just six months away, the Congress is increasingly seeing itself at the receiving end.
h_ishfaq@dnaindia.net
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