Times View

MEERUT: A day after gunmen killed 10 journalists in Paris, a BSP functionary in Meerut sparked a nation-wide controversy on Thursday when he offered to pay Rs 51 crore to “anyone who comes forward and claims responsibility for the attack”.Yakub Qureshi, the BSP functionary said, “Whosoever disrespects the Prophet Mohammad deserves death.”The district unit of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was quick to condemn the remark. “Yakub Qureshi has made these controversial statements in his personal capacity. Bahujan Samaj Party has no association with those statements,” a senior leader of the party’s Meerut unit told TOI though he insisted that he not be named. Local BSP netas usually don’t comment on controversies and leave it for party president Mayawati to express the party’s viewpoint, the leader explained.Sources claimed that Qureshi had been immediately reprimanded by the BSP chief, prompting him to call off a press conference scheduled for 2 pm and switch off his phones to avoid media queries.While the French satirical weekly has a history of satirical depiction of Islam and Islamist fundamentalists, Qureshi has a history of his own. In 2006, at the height of a global stir over a Danish cartoonist's satirical portrayal of Prophet Mohammad, Qureshi had announced an identical sum of “prize money” to anyone who could kill the cartoonist.Meanwhile, lawyer activist Shehzad Poonawalla has written to Uttar Pradesh DGP Arun Kumar Gupta and exhorting him to get the police to file a case of hate speech against Qureshi.Responding to the controversy and Poonawalla’s call for legal action against Qureshi, the Meerut police said they were in the process of establishing facts of the case. “We are first consulting our legal team on the matter and will take necessary action after that,” SSP Onkar Singh told TOI.Late night on Thursday, cops in Meerut filed a case against Qureshi. SP (City) Om Prakash said, “The police has filed an FIR against Yakub Qureshi under section 505 of the IPC for hate speech.”The reward offered by the former MLA is a disgrace not only to our polity but to his community as well. Far from doing Indian Muslims any favours, he has only served to perpetuate stereotypes about them. That people like him have not just survived but have actually thrived in Indian politics also shows up how politics based on identity and vote banks is liable to throw up the worst kind of elements. Condemning his publicity seeking offer is not enough. All our parties must introspect about why such elements are able to become lawmakers.