Dayashankar Singh Missing, Family's FIR Against Mayawati Alleges Threats

Lucknow: Dayashankar Singh, expelled by the BJP and facing arrest for his abuse of Mayawati, remains missing as the police search across Uttar Pradesh for the 44-year-old politician.

His wife Swati Singh has filed a police complaint against Mayawati, alleging that she and her 12-year-old daughter are being abused and threatened by the former chief minister's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

"They are calling me and my daughter, they are abusing her. My daughter is traumatized. No one is standing by us...She has stopped going to school," Mrs Singh, a professor at Lucknow University, said on Friday.

"Can a person punished multiple times for a single mistake...If something happens to my children, will Mayawati take responsibility for it?" she questioned.

Mr Singh, who was a Vice President of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, was expelled for six years after he used offensive words for Mayawati. He was also named in a police complaint.

On Thursday, BSP supporters held massive protests in Lucknow demanding Mr Singh's arrest. Some leaders of Mayawati's party, however, appeared to match Mr Singh's loose talk with their own. One leader from Chandigarh has offered 50 lakhs for Mr Singh's tongue; another has attributed his comments to "faulty DNA as an illegitimate child."

Mayawati today denied that her workers had used abusive language and said: "They were very hurt by the comments against me."

She stressed that Mr Singh's expulsion by the BJP was not enough and her party had agreed to call off its protests only because it was guaranteed his arrest.

The comments against Mayawati have provoked outrage in Parliament, with opposition parties uniting against the government at a time politics over Dalits have taken centre-stage following the flogging and shaming of tannery workers in Gujarat for skinning a dead cow.