Uma Bharti (top), Babulal Gaur: Trouble at home

Bhopal, July 4: Uma Bharti’s deputy and Madhya Pradesh home minister Babulal Gaur shocked BJP members and opponents alike by demolishing the party’s claim that the state capital is a hotbed of anti-national activities.

Gaur gave a clean chit to Indian Muslims, saying none figured in the list of dreaded militants drawn up by the Union home ministry. Madhya Pradesh had no links with terror networks operating in and outside India, he said.

Gaur caused further embarrassment by saying the crime rate in Madhya Pradesh has risen by 8 per cent since the BJP came to power in the state.

There has been a sudden spate of murders in Bhopal. Recently, two girls allegedly slaughtered their “possessed” father and drank his blood to ward off evil.

A kachcha-banian gang has also been striking at will in Gwalior, Ujjain and several other cities. In Chambal, dac- oits have earned notoriety and often looted police stations and held police personnel for ransom.

Gaur’s remarks are contrary to Uma’s stand that major terrorists and anti-national elements have links with Bhopal. The chief minister and the BJP had termed Madhya Pradesh a “soft state” for terrorists and used this as an election plank during the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. The BJP leadership had named Dawood Ibrahim, Abu Salem and the Pakistan’s ISI among those with “deep links” in Bhopal.

However, the home minister today said the claim has no basis, while admitting that he, too, had raised the issue in the Assembly. “We used to raise it in the Assembly on the basis of newspaper reports,” he said.

The Uma camp has dubbed Gaur’s remarks a sign of dissent. Gaur, her supporters said, is upset over the change of his portfolio. The MLA from Bhopal was shifted from urban development to the home minis- try apparently against his wishes.

Police remain clueless about the rising crime graph and have decided to focus on less heinous violations of the law. But here, too, they have not met with much success.

In Bhopal, police raided 30 cyber cafes and caught several youths emulating scenes on pornographic websites. In one place, the police caught a colleague in the act. The policeman was on duty and had kept his service revolver with his uniform on the hanger.

Though the incident made headlines in local media, all the 200-odd people taken to police stations were let off the next day as the police discovered that they did not have any evidence. Sheepish officers said they would use spy cameras in future to record evidence.