Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday said an IAS officer would not have been asked to resign had the situation been reversed and his son been the accused in the Chandigarh stalking case. His statement comes in the wake of calls for Haryana Bharatiya Janata Party President Subhash Barala to resign for his son Vikas Barala’s arrest in the case.
“If this topic was vice versa, the girl was the daughter of a political leader and the boy the son of an IAS officer, then none of us would be demanding resignation of the IAS officer,” he said at a press conference in Gurugram, according to The Indian Express.
Khattar further claimed that the matter was being politicised. “These topics should not be taken in a political manner,” the chief minister said. “The person involved has already been arrested...The law will do its work.”
Vikas Barala and his friend Ashish Kumar were arrested on August 5 and remanded to police custody for 14 days on August 12 for allegedly stalking and trying to abduct Varnika Kundu, an IAS officer’s daughter. They are believed to have chased her in an SUV while she was driving from Panchkula to Chandigarh.
A medical examination had found both Barala and Kumar drunk at the time. They will be produced before a Chandigarh court on August 24.
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