Lalan Paswan asked the friend of a murdered student on camera, 'How can you tell she was raped'
A Bihar lawmaker, in an appalling display of insensitivity, is seen on camera asking the friend of a murdered student: "How can you tell she was raped... Where was blood coming from?" Lalan Paswan also implies during his "interrogation" that the killer could be known to some girls.
Mr Paswan is a lawmaker of BJP ally Rashtriya Lok Samata Party, formed by Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha.
He was visiting a government-run girl's hostel in Vaishali after a Class 10 student was found dead on Sunday, her clothes soaked in blood. He decided to investigate for himself whether rape was involved.
"You are educated, you should answer clearly," he is seen telling a girl who squirms uncomfortably at his questions, standing in a small crowd of students and teachers.
The lawmaker, not done with his crass show of power, prods the teen: "If you don't tell us clearly, what will you do tomorrow if it (rape) happens to you? If the rapist comes to your room, what will happen then?"
He alleges that girls in the hostel were involved with boys and insisted that given a chance, he could easily solve the case by grilling students.
Mr Paswan also turns to a teacher and suggests that "anyone, even you" could have helped the attacker access the girl's quarters.
In the middle of the third degree, the lawmaker boasted that he could make even Chief Minister Nitish Kumar sweat.
The politician later defended himself saying his method could be wrong but his intentions were pure.
"My intention was to help the girls of the Dalit residential school and in that spirit I was seeking information about the incident...media showed the video by concocting it," he told the Press Trust of India.
The lawmaker's outrageous comments come days after the alleged mass molestation of women on the roads of Bengaluru on New Year's Eve was callously dismissed by Karnataka's Home Minister G Parameswara with the comment: "Such things happen." The minister has since said he was quoted out of context.