Listen To This Post

New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of fostering a “Manuwadi system” that he said had become a curse for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and the weaker sections of society.

His remarks came in response to the death by suicide of senior Dalit IPS officer Y Puran Kumar, which has triggered widespread outrage and political debate in Haryana and beyond.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kharge described the incident as “deeply shocking” and said it was a horrifying reflection of “social injustice, inhumanity, and the growing insensitivity of the system. “Even a senior Dalit officer was denied justice and a fair hearing under the BJP regime,” Kharge wrote, expressing condolences to Kumar’s family and colleagues.

He alleged that over the past eleven years, the BJP had entrenched a “Manuwadi mentality” so deeply in governance that marginalised voices were being systematically silenced.“When the Chief Justice of India can be attacked in the Supreme Court and the BJP’s ecosystem defends it in the name of caste and religion, it is clear that the slogan of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ was nothing but a cruel joke,” Kharge said.

The Congress chief further argued that this mindset of social oppression, rooted in centuries of caste discrimination, remained unchanged under the present dispensation.“That is why incidents like the brutal mob lynching of unarmed Dalit youth Hariom Valmiki happen, and yet Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not utter even two words of condemnation,” he added.

Kharge said the episode was not an isolated tragedy but a mirror of a broader structural injustice perpetuated by the BJP-RSS-backed system.“This is not merely one officer’s death—it represents a system that continues to crush the dignity of Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs and minorities. Such a system poses a grave threat to our Constitution and democracy,” he warned.

ADGP  Y Puran Kumar, a 2001-batch IPS officer of the Haryana cadre and recipient of the President’s Medal for Meritorious Service, was found dead with a gunshot wound at his official residence in Sector 11, Chandigarh, on Tuesday afternoon. His wife, Amneet P Kumar, a 2001-batch IAS officer, who was in Japan as part of a delegation led by Chief Minister Nayab Saini, returned to Chandigarh on Wednesday. She has submitted a formal complaint to the Chief Minister, seeking registration of an FIR against the officers named in her husband’s nine-page suicide note, alleging harassment and humiliation.

The incident has sparked widespread calls for a high-level and impartial investigation, with senior Congress leaders Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kumari Selja, and Varun Chaudhary also demanding accountability from the state government.