Did you know that a team of Pydhonie police from Mumbai is in Delhi to physically handover summons to Nupur Sharma to appear before the police for various complaints filed against her following her statements on Times Now.
Today, the Kolkata Police also issued a lookout notice for her after she failed to appear before its officers for the fourth time in a row because of the same statement that triggered widespread violence in parts of West Bengal.
Nupur Sharma had cited apprehensions of a possible assault on her if she visited Kolkata and sought four weeks’ time to appear before the police officers.
Following the debate that erupted nationwide protests, Nupur Sharma continued to meet people like usual. It was only when things started getting out of hand, did she become untraceable. On 27th May, she requested the media not to disclose her address because it could jeopardise the safety of her and her family. “My sister, my mother and my father were all being threatened with murder, rape and beheading,” she tweeted.
Nupur Sharma said she has been receiving one threat call after another. She appealed to the Delhi Police for security. and repeatedly asked the media not to make her home address and phone number public. Delhi Police said an FIR has been included based on Nupur Sharma’s complaint and that she is being provided the highest level of security by the police. The police said she was given a foolproof security cover around her house due to the threats which became more serious after the beheading in Udaipur and Amravati here in Maharashtra, where a 54 year old chemist was hacked to death for forwarding a post supporting Nupur Sharma in some whatsapp groups. The Maharashtra police that earlier did not reveal the cause of Umesh’s death have now admitted that his killing was related to the Nupur Sharma case.
On Thursday, 21st June when Umesh Kolhe was on his way back from his medical shop at around 10pm, he was ambushed by two men on a motorcycle, who killed him by slitting his throat. His 27-year-old son and wife were accompanying him in a different vehicle. His son rushed him to hospital but he was declared dead.
The murder was chillingly similar to the one in Rajasthan’s Udaipur this week when a tailor Kanhaiya Lal was beaheaded by two men because he shared a post online in support of Nupur Sharma. Kanhaiyalal had said his son accidently shared the post while playing games on his phone and even deleted it. He had approached Udaipur police telling them he feared for his life but the police did not take him seriously back then.
While Kanhaiyalal’s case was already with National Investigation Agency, today, Union Home Minister Amit Shah transferred Umesh Kolhe’s case to NIA as well, after the local BJP unit accused the police of trying to conceal the reason behind the killing.
But who exactly is Nupur Sharma, who is at the centre of the upheavel that is currently at a boiling point in India?
A student of law at Delhi University, Nupur Sharma began her political career in 2008 when she was elected as the president of the students’ union as a candidate of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS
The 37-year-old firerbrand lawyer was a much sought-after official spokesperson of the BJP until she was suspended due to this case. If you’re an avid viewer of Indian news channels then you would have surely seen seen her appearing night after night on TV debates to put forth the views of her party and upholding PM Modi’s decisions and policies besides often getting into heated arguments with fellow panelists.
But she was always the hot favourite when it came to being at the forefront and the face of the party. Her political career picked up pace in 2011 when she returned to India after doing her masters in international business law from the London School of Economics.
Brash and articulate, her ability to argue and put forth her point of view in English and Hindi, earned her a place in the BJP’s media committee for the 2013 Delhi assembly elections.
Two years later, she stood against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and lost but her energetic campaign brought her back into the limelight – she was appointed an official spokesperson for the party in Delhi and in 2020, she became a “national spokesperson” for the BJP.
Did you know that Nupur Sharma has acted as Guest Editor for ‘The Times of India’ for its Republic Day Special edition in 2009. In the same year in March, Hindustan Times also featured her as one of the 10 Most Inspirational Women in the country. Nupur was a member of the delegation from India and BJP for the 2012 Indo-Pak American Council of Young Political Leaders summit in the United States in July 2012. She has been a part of welfare projects like the installation of water purifiers, solar lamps, and CCTV for campus security and successfully completed them during her tenure of the president of Delhi University’s Students Union. She is unmarried.
Nobody has heard from Nupur Sharma since 5th June when she last tweeted this unconditional withdrawal of her statement. Because there are many FIRs against Nupur Sharma all over the country following her statements, she pleaded to the Supreme Court to transfer them all to Delhi, so she doesn’t have to run around the country attending court cases amidst serious threat to her life. But the apex court judges instead came down heavily on her blaming her for setting the country on fire and held her responsible for the Udaipur killing as well. The judges said that she should appear on a TV channel and “apologise to the whole nation” for her remarks.
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