By Muslim Mirror
Deepika Pushkar Nath, the spokesperson for the Jammu and Kashmir Congress, resigned from the organisation on Tuesday, citing the party’s choice to “allow” former minister Chaudhary Lal Singh to participate in the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra that will approach the Union territory later this week.
Nath stated that she is leaving the party on ideological grounds since Singh was accountable for ruining the 2018 Kathua rape case by “brazenly defending” the rapists of an eight-year-old nomadic girl.
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.— Deepika Pushkar Nath (@DeepikaSRajawat) January 17, 2023
“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 said in a tweet.
Singh, a two-time MP and three-time MLA who defected from the Congress to the BJP in 2014, served as a minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government that fell in June 2018 after the national party withdrew.
After controversy erupted over his involvement in a rally in January 2018 in favour of the Kathua rape accused, Singh left the BJP and launched the Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party (DSSP) some months before the government was overthrown.
He had excused himself by saying that he had attended the demonstration to “defuse the situation.”
Nath, a lawyer by profession, accompanied the victim’s parents to the high court in Jammu to monitor the inquiry and advised them on how to appeal to the Supreme Court to request that the trial be moved to Pathankot (Punjab).