The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has reacted to a resident of Maharashtra for Right to Information, saying he has no information about the “tukde-tukde gang”.
Saket Gokhale of Maharashtra had raised several questions about the “tukde tukde gang”, which sought to find out if the term was defined by the Ministry of Home Affairs and its response to the challenge.
MHA did not respond to queries from Hindustan Times seeking clarification on RHTI’s response.
“Tukde tukde gang” is a colloquial language used by the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the last five years to work against the nation’s interest to find out the party’s allegations. One of the earliest occasions, when BJP leaders used the term, was in 2016 when JNU’s student union president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested for raising slogans for Kashmir’s independence from India. Kumar took about three weeks in Tihar Jail on charges of controversial sedition.
The BJP came up with the ‘UK tukde tukde gang’ phase to target political parties and individuals and came out in support of Kanhaiya Kumar and since then, accused other convicts as well.
In addition to seeking a “definition” of the tukde-tukde gang, Saket Gokhale’s request under the RTI Act asked the Ministry of Home Affairs to indicate that “a standard operating procedure (SoP) has been devised” to identify the alleged gang.
In the RTI application, the Ministry of Home Affairs was asked to clarify whether the Union Home Minister’s reference to this alleged “piece-by-gang” was based on specific briefings by the Ministry or other law enforcement agencies? A list of leaders and members of this “gang” was prepared which was referred by the Home Minister.