Kiran Bedi half-bent before Modi: Top activist asks ex-IPS officer to retrospect as she has ample time now

Kiran Bedi              Shabnam Hashmi

By Our Representative
A day before the results for the Delhi assembly elections are to be announced, well-known human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi has, in an open letter to Kiran Bedi, the BJP's chief ministerial candidate, wondered what made the ex-IPS officer-turned-politician “half-bend” in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. One who has taken up the cause of Gujarat's 2002 riot victims, Hashmi said, she saw a photograph where Bedi was half bent and was looking at Modi, asking him something. “The expression on your face is of helplessness and wanting approval from him”, she said.
“It extremely pained me. I might have hadifferences with you but as an activist and as a human being I would never want you or for that matter any other professional woman in this situation”, Hashmi said, adding, "I might not have been your fan, but you have been a very confident professional woman”, and “every human being has shortcomings and we constantly strive to improve them.”
Asking Bedi to “reflect” when she is alone only "with herself" what Modi has done to her self esteem, Hashmi tells her, “Think as a woman think as a mother. Think as a professional woman who has led a life with her head held high. The most difficult thing is to have the courage to ruthlessly tell the truth to your own self to analyse your own self. For your own sake please do it.”
Telling her that she was never a fan of Bedi “because I strongly disagreed with your patronising and dictatorial way of doing ‘social service’”, Hashmi says, “Now that you will have ample free time I request you to reflect and introspect. I suggest make yourself a coffee sit in a rocking chair and put your feet in a bucket of hot water and relax. Please think about what they have done to you.”
Telling Bedi why she should not have bent before Modi, Hashmi says, “You might not know but I recorded testimonies of gang rape survivors in 2002 when Gujarat was still burning. I travelled to over 50 villages across ten districts. Met doctors in small village dispensaries who had done postmortem, saw photographs of charred bodies of many women with slit open stomachs and dead fetuses sticking to their bodies.”
Hashmi adds, “There were many Kausar Banos not only one in Naroda Patiya whose case everyone knows. Ms Bedi I met women who couldn’t get up for months because they were gang raped by 15-20 men and their vaginas were torn apart.” Yet, it is the same Modi who “took out a Gaurav Yatra after 2002 carnage, he called the relief camps – where people who had lost everything were given shelter – child producing factories.”
“Now last two years' Youtube has been sanitised of Modis footage spewing venom and talking filth. Sakshi Maharaj and Sadhvi Prachi are no match in front of Modi. What he spoke was much more venomous”, Hashmi tells Bedi, adding, “When Bilkis was being gang raped, they smashed her little daughter's head against a stone and she died on the spot. Medina was forced to see her own daughter and niece being gang raped.”
Given this backdrop, Hashmi tells Bedi, “It pained me to see you bend before this man. You can tell me about the clean chit. I know a little too much to appreciate the clean chit stories. When this man was manipulated to become the PM, I was advised to be careful. I told all such friends that maximum they can do is to malign, arrest or kill me. I would rather be killed physically than morally.”