The 41-year-old man who attacked Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta was said to have acted after dreaming of a dog beside a Shivling in a temple. This midnight canine revelation became his guiding philosophy for what followed. The dog, according to his version, complained that the canines in Delhi were in deep distress.
This, the 429-page chargesheet said, was the supposed divine nudge behind his August attack on Delhi’s Chief Minister.
Before that dream-fuelled mission, the chargesheet recounts how Rajeshbhai Khimjibhai Sakariya had, in May, staged a hunger strike in Ayodhya over monkeys, allegedly fought with temple guards, and ended up detained by police.
It also notes that he had reportedly watched “many videos on Facebook” of people protesting in Delhi on dog-related issues and blaming the Chief Minister for them.
According to a report by a national newspaper, Sakariya, from Rajkot, eventually confronted the CM during a Jan Sunwai on August 20, where he was arrested immediately.
Around that time in Rajkot, his mother Bhanu Khimji Sakariya told media outlets that her son was a dog lover with “mental issues.”
He was upset over the Supreme Court’s August 11 direction that stray dogs in the NCR be collected and permanently placed in shelters.
She said he had a temperament that led him to hit anyone, including her and his wife, and that he had grown furious over the dog issue, striking the bed so hard in anger that he nearly broke it.
He also informed his wife and a friend named Bapu that he intended to go to the capital and sit on a hunger strike. He reportedly warned that if people tried to stop him, he would kill them irrespective of their identities.
Before heading to Delhi, he went to Ujjain to seek “Mahakal’s command” on whether he should go. He said he prepared two slips marked “yes” and “no”, placed them before Mahakal, drew one, and interpreted the “yes” as Mahakal’s order to proceed with the hunger strike plan.
His wife refused him travel money, but his friend and co-accused Tahseen Raza transferred Rs 2,000 to him online.
He told police he requested an appointment to meet the Chief Minister and received a Jan Sunwai slip. After travelling by metro to Kashmiri Gate, he picked up a fruit-cutting knife from a vendor’s cart and stayed at the Delhi Gujarati Samaj Dharamshala.
On the morning of August 20, seeing the police presence around the venue, he threw the knife into an empty plot and went into Jan Sunwai Sadan.
Special Public Prosecutor Pradeep Rana informed the court that investigators had uncovered what he described as a “deep-rooted conspiracy” showing the act was pre-planned and pre-meditated.
According to him, the probe found that the accused had earlier tried to “carry out some mischief” inside the Supreme Court premises but abandoned it due to heavy security.
The chargesheet says that around 8.45 am, he told the CM that banning dogs in Delhi was wrong.
He threatened she would now face the consequences. It states that he then slapped her hard, grabbed her by the hair, and pulled her to the ground.
He pressed her neck with both hands and kept shouting that he would not let her live, the chargesheet claimed.
The chargesheet adds that if he had choked Rekha Gupta for a few seconds more, she could have been killed.
It says the PSOs acted quickly and stopped him.
Also Read: Delhi CM Rekha Gupta Attack: Family Claims Assailant Was Upset Over Stray Dog Ruling https://www.vibesofindia.com/delhi-cm-rekha-gupta-attack-family-claims-assailant-was-upset-over-stray-dog-ruling/
