BJP Takes in, Then Sacks, Kapil Gujjar, the Man Who Fired Shots at Shaheen Bagh

New Delhi, 31 Dec 2020 [Fik/News Sources]: The Bharatiya Janata Party, which took ‘Shaheen Bagh shooter’ Kapil Gujjar in its fold, has expelled him from party within hours. He had joined the saffron party in the morning of Wednesday. The news of his sacking came in the evening.

In an apparent damage control after media reports highlighted his past, the party said it did not know of his antecedents when he joined the party earlier in the day. “Kapil Gujjar was among some people who were inducted into the party from the Bahujan Samaj Party. We had no idea of his involvement in the controversial Shaheen Bagh incident. On finding out, his joining has been cancelled with immediate effect,” NDTV quoted as saying the BJP’s Ghaziabad chief Sanjeev Sharma in a statement.

Gujjar shot to fame in February this year for firing bullets at the anti-CAA protest site of Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh.

“Hamare desh mein sirf Hinduon ki chalegi. Aur kisi ki nahi chalegi,” (Only Hindus will get to call the shots in our country and nobody else), Gujjar had said in February after opening fire near the stage where anti-CAA protestors were sitting. He was later taken into custody by police personnel.

Shaheen Bagh emerged as the most enduring symbol of the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act alongside a proposed National Register of Citizens, which aims to list Indian citizens and delegitimise alleged infiltrators. From December 14, 2019, to March 24, the 101-day sit-in protest led by Muslim women attracted thousands of supporters every day, inspiring dozens of other similar women’s protests in cities and towns across India.

The firing incident by Kapil Gujjar had occurred two days after a gunman shot a student near Jamia Millia Islamia while protestors were marching to the Gandhi memorial at Rajghat on the anniversary of the national icon’s assassination at the hands of a right-wing Hindu fanatic.

The shooting incident had happened during the heat of Delhi Assembly election in which the BJP was the main challenger to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of Arvind Kejriwal. An attempt was made to link Gujjar with the AAP. However, Gujjar’s father rejected the claim by saying that his son is a “supporter” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. He had also said that Gujjar had “nothing to do with politics”.