New Delhi: Ankur Sharma, the lawyer defending Sanji Ram, an accused in the gangrape and murder of an eight-year-old in Kathua, has called the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti a “Jihadi CM.”

Launching an all-round tirade against the chief minister, Sharma has accused her of giving “legal immunity to cow slaughter and bovine smuggling,” and leading an “Islamo-fascist communal agenda for demographic change in Jammu’s Hindu-dominated areas.”

“Mehbooba Mufti is a jihadi…She gives legal immunity to cow slaughter and bovine smuggling. She refers to Gujjars and Bakarwals as tribals, who are Muslims, and says Section 188 RPC will not be invoked against them,” Sharma told the Indian Express.

Claiming that he has been “receiving calls from the Hindu Mahasabha president and Hindu organisations in Maharashtra,” the lawyer said that he was associated with the Hindu Ekta Manch that has been set up to support the accused in the case as he supports their demand for a CBI inquiry.

The Manch is a right-wing organisation that has been openly supporting one of the accused in the Kathua gangrape case. Among those publicly supporting the accused, many are associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or subscribe to the belief that Hindus have been discriminated against by Muslims in the region.

Sharma has also accused the BJP of “abandoning their political constituency.” The massive public outcry at home and criticism abroad in the wake of Kathua violenc, have forced the BJP on the blackfoot. The prime minister too was compelled to break his protracted silence on the issue. The party is now trying to distance itself from groups like the Hindu Ekta Manch.

Investigation in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl belonging to the Bakarwal community has revealed that the violence was prompted by the majority community’s motive to drive out the Muslim Bakarwal community from the region. The chargesheet said that the key accused Sanji Ram, a retired revenue official, was against the settlement of the Bakarwals in Rasana Kootah, and Dhamyal area of Kathua district.

Adding to their grouse was a meeting Mufti held with officials in February, where directing them not to dislodge the tribals (Bakarwals) from the lands till the government formulated a tribal policy. Sharma alleged that the order enabled the community to occupy lands in Hindu-dominated areas.

“The order came as a tool for those people to use,” said Sharma. “Everybody knows that state land, forest land have been encroached upon only by this community… They are coming from outside and capturing hundreds and hundreds of kanals of land.”

Reeling out a string of allegations against the Bakarwals, the lawyer said the community, backed by “pan-Islamic financial cartels,” was “quoting higher prices for purchasing land.” “People who come from outside who are Muslim are ready to pay more than the market price, double the market price, 1.5 times the market price. There are NGOs who are in league with these pan-Islamic financial cartels headed by the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Countries), whose idea is to spread Islam in the entire world. They pay a subsidy of 40 per cent for purchasing land in Hindu-dominated areas. Earlier it was 25%,” he said.

In fact, a video containing a speech delivered by Sharma at a Hindu Ekta Manch rally suggests that the lawyer is exhorting the majority community to boycott all economic transactions with the Bakarwals.

“We shall take a pledge here and it shall be the agenda of the (Hindu Ekta) Manch also to ensure that we will not sell our land to outsiders,” Sharma can be heard saying in Dogri. “Secondly, you shall stop all those things which strengthen their community here and improve their financial condition, whether it is trade with them, or purchasing milk from them or selling them fodder. You have to stop all these things as there are conspiracies on against you.”

This is not the first time Sharma has levelled such controversial remarks against the Bakarwal community or Shwetambari Sharma, the lone woman officer in the Special Investigative Team who is prosecuting the accused in the case. Sharma had earlier stated that “it was beyond her (Shwetambri Sharma’s) intelligence to work on the case.”