Nitish Kumar, Lalu Shedding 'Fake Tears', Says BJP Leader Sushil Modi

Patna: Condemning the attack on a Dalit family in Haryana, senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi today charged Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad with shedding 'fake tears' on the incident apparently with an eye to get the sizeable votes of Dalits in Bihar assembly polls.

"The Faridabad incident is condemnable, but the RJD supremo Lalu Prasad has conveniently forgotten that during his party's 15 years' rule in Bihar, hundreds of Dalits were massacred," he said in a series of tweets.

While 58 Dalits were massacred in Laxmanpur Bathe village in Arwal district, 21 others were killed in another massacre in Bathani Tola village in Bhojpur district and 34 in Miyapur village in Aurangabad district during the RJD's 15 years' rule in Bihar, Mr Modi said.

"The Laxmanpur Bathe massacre in December 1997 had horrified the country so much so that the then President (KR Narayan) had described it as a 'national shame'," the BJP leader recalled.

Slamming successive governments of Ms Rabri Devi and Mr Nitish Kumar for tardy probe in these mass massacre cases leading to acquittal of most of the accused persons, he said that Bihar police was guilty of failing to collect clinching evidence against the accused persons, while the state governments did not fight the cases properly to bring culprits to justice.

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"Out of four incidents of massacre of Dalits in Bihar, the accused persons in two cases were acquitted during the RJD rule, while those in as many other cases got away during the Nitish Kumar regime," Mr Modi, who was the deputy chief minister in the erstwhile NDA government for nearly eight years, said.

Slamming both the RJD supremo and the senior JD-U leaders for shedding "fake tears" to express solidarity with the Dalit family in Haryana, he said the Dalits of Bihar knew the two secular alliance leaders too well.

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Earlier in the day, Mr Kumar and Mr Prasad had attacked the NDA government over Faridabad incident in which two children of a Dalit family were burnt alive and their parents suffered injuries in an attack by upper caste people.