Your Turn To Act, Says BJP To Mayawati Whose Leader Abused 12-Year-Old

New Delhi: Your turn, said the BJP to Mayawati today, daring her to punish a senior party leader who used deeply offensive language about a 12-year-old girl whose father, Dayashankar Singh, abused Mayawati earlier this week.

On Wednesday in parliament, leaders from different parties condemned the smut expressed by Mr Singh. "India will not forgive the BJP for this insult to Dalits," warned Mayawati, adding protests would follow if Mr Singh were not penalized.

Mr Singh, a vice president of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, was suspended for six years after venomous comments about Mayawati.   

Since then, Mr Singh, has been missing; the police has been unable to locate him. His arrest is essential, Mayawati has said, even as her supporters have retaliated with filthy language of their own.  A leader from her Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP has publicly offered 50 lakhs for Mr Singh's tongue.

Comments like that pale in comparison to Naseemuddin Siddiqui, national general secretary of BSP, who today said Mr Singh's young daughter should be "handed to a crowd."

Mr Singh's 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 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," Ms Singh, a professor at Lucknow University, said on Friday.

"Party will organize protest at all the district headquarters tomorrow demanding action against Siddiqui. BJP has named the protests as "Beti ke Samman main, Bhajapa maidan main"," said general secretary UP BJP Vijay Bahadur Pathak.

Dalits form 21 percent of UP's population, and their vote is crucial in deciding who will win the election next year. Traditionally strong supporters of Mayawati, they spurned her in the general election of 2014, with a significant section opting for the BJP, in part because of the high-octane campaign of then presumptive Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  Mayawati lost the state election in 2011 to Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party. The controversy around her comes as she has led the opposition's attack on the centre for the recent attacks on Dalits in Gujarat by cow vigilantes. The men who were beaten up earlier this month were skinning a dead cow, an occupation assigned traditionally to lower castes.  Their assaulters accused them of cow slaughter and filmed the thrashing, then posted the video on social media. Large and violent Dalit protests have followed, and neary 20 Dalits have attempted suicide since Monday.