AGRA: In a startling and graphic revelation, Union minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Uma Bharti on Thursday claimed that she had got rapists tortured during her tenure as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh , and had let survivors watch.Addressing a rally in Agra, Bharti, while referring to the Bulandshahr gang rape of a woman and her daughter by robbers in August 2016, said, “The rapists should be hung upside down and beaten till their skin comes off. Salt and chilly should be rubbed on their wounds, so that they scream for their lives. That is what I had got done when I was chief minister (of Madhya Pradesh from 2003 to 2004).”The Union minister of water resources also revealed that when a police officer objected to such treatment of the culprits, “I told him people who behave like ‘danav’ (demons) have no human rights. Their heads should be cut off like Ravana’s”. Bharti also claimed that she asked a rape survivor to watch the rapist’s torture through a lockup window so that she could get some “peace”.This is the latest of the ascetic and senior BJP’s leaders numerous controversial statements, including during her tenure as Union minister with the NDA government. Defending the surgical strikes by the armed forces in 2016, Bharti had said, in a reference to Opposition leaders, “Those who seek evidence about surgical strikes should go to Pakistan”.The ascetic, who was associated with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the early 1990s, came to prominence in that period for her fiery speeches against the Babri mosque structure. In 2004, she was forced to resign as chief minister of MP because of an arrest warrant in connection with the 1994 Hubli riots.At the Thursday rally, Bharti also castigated the Akhilesh government for not doing enough to ensure that the alleged rapists weren’t bailed out. She also criticized Samajwadi Party MP Dimple Yadav for seeking votes for her husband’s party, but not meeting the rape survivors.Defending BJP’s Hindutva agenda, the Union minister said, “When we talk about cow, Rama and Ganga, we are accused of dividing the country, whereas it was Congress who divided it.” She added that “efforts could be made” to get back the parts which had been “divided” earlier. Watch Got rapists tortured, made them beg for their lives as CM: Uma Bharti