Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi has come to the defence of his son a day after the latter was accused of being involved in a sex scandal with a woman constable.
Manjhi said his son had every right to be with his girlfriend, just like other youths, and that nobody could object to it.
Manjhi was handed power to rule the state in May by his successor Nitish Kumar, who resigned after taking responsibility for his party’s disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha elections.
The new chief minister got pulled into the eye of the storm after his son Praveen Manjhi was allegedly caught with a woman constable in a hotel room at Bodh Gaya over the weekend.
The main opposition, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), sought the resignation of the chief minister on moral grounds and the immediate arrest of his son, but Manjhi claims his son did nothing wrong.
“Anyone can have a girlfriend. Don’t young couples mingle at city’s parks every day? I don’t remember anyone raising objections to it,” the chief minister told the media on Saturday evening, adding his son too had the right to be with his girlfriend wherever and whenever he pleases. “Although I am still not sure my son had gone there [the hotel] with his girlfriend yet the CCTV footage of the hotel also do not show any wrongdoing,” he said.
He accused the BJP of hatching a political conspiracy against him to tarnish his image as he comes from the poorest of the poor class or Mahadalit community.
“The BJP is still not digesting the fact that a person from [the] Mahadalit community has got the CM’s chair and hence [are] concocting stories to defame him but I am not going to allow this mischief [to] go unchallenged and will register cases against such people,” he said.
The Janata Dal (United) and its alliance partners, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress, have chosen to ignore the situation even as the BJP has been trying to make it the main election issue in the run-up to the assembly by-polls to 10 seats in Bihar. Insiders said the JD-U apprehend the issue could badly mar poll prospects and is busy doing damage-control.
However, the BJP has refused to let the issue go and are repeatedly accusing the ruling regime of covering up the issue unmindful of the chief minister’s stern warnings.
“The CM has been wrongly defending his son and hence we demand a high-level probe into the entire incident to let the truth come out,” senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said on Sunday, alleging that the official position of the chief minister was being openly misused. He also alleged that the hotel owner was threatened not to file case against the chief minister’s son.