Calling himself a “victim” of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Sheikh Abdul Rashid said on Thursday, “I have been dying in Tihar Jail for last 5.5 years. I have been a victim of BJP. I don’t want to talk about the suppression, let them have some grace.”
Mehbooba Mufti was criticising the BJP, when she called Rashid a BJP proxy– “I want to ask the government, if you have again come up a proxy party, Engineer Rashid’s party, when all your other proxy parties have failed, you have brought Engineer Rashid’s party to the fore, and you are supporting them fully with funds and everything, then tell us clearly that others parties do not have to contest elections,” she said.
Responding to her allegations, Rashid said, “When she (Mehbooba Mufti) says BJP has given me fund, then she knows how this system of finance works, she would have received the fund.”
The Lok Sabha MP, who defeated Omar Abdullah in the recently concluded General Elections added, “When Omar Abdullah said that Engineer Rashid is innocent and he has been victimised by Sajjad Lone, now he is saying that he is BJP proxy, have some shame, if I would have been a BJP proxy, why would I be in jail?”
Rashid has been granted interim bail in a terror funding case in order to campaign in the upcoming Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections. He was arrested in 2019 by the NIA under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in connection with the 2017 terror-funding case.