Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan on Saturday refuted allegations that he had insulted Army personnel, ANI reported. Several media reports said that the Uttar Pradesh-based leader, while addressing party workers in Rampur, had said excesses committed by security forces in places like Kashmir, Tripura, Jharkhand and West Bengal had forced “women to chop off the private parts of Army men”.

The news agency, however, had quoted Khan’s as saying, “armed women attacked soldiers and cut off their private parts. They cut the part they had problems with. India should be ashamed. How will the country face the world now?”

Khan has been booked for sedition and other offences after several people filed multiple complaints against him over his comments against the Indian Army, The Times of India reported on Saturday. Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad member Anil Pandey filed a complaint with the Chandpur police station in Bijnor, police officer Ajay Kumar Singh said.

“I have not violated any law or insulted any army,” Azam Khan said. “We should be shameful for that day when on one side Pakistan was beheading our soldiers and on another side Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Pakistan.”

Heated reactions

Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramaniam Swamy said the Muslim politician would have been beheaded for making similar statements in a Muslim-majority country. “He says awful things,” Swamy said. “That man in unbalanced. The democracy that he [Azam Khan] is enjoying in India, in no Muslim country can he speak like this about their own situations,” ANI quoted him as saying.

The Bajrang Dal has announced a cash reward of Rs 51 lakh to behead the politician, Hindustan Times reported. “Anyone who will paint his face black and feed him pork [consumption of which is prohibited in Islam] will be awarded Rs 1 crore,” a statement by the group reportedly said.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad member Anil Pandey said he and his colleagues staged a protest outside the office of Superintendent of Police in Bijnor to force the police to lodge an FIR against the politician, The Indian Express reported. On Thursday, VHP leader and advocate Rajesh Kumar Awasthi in Shahjahanpur reportedly offered to reward Rs 50 lakh to anyone who cuts off Khan’s tongue. “People like Azam Khan make such derogatory statements only to lower the morale of security forces and such things can only be stopped after their tongues are cut off,” Awasthi said.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party had demanded that the Samajwadi Party dismiss Khan for “dividing the country” on religious lines.

His remarks had also triggered protests across the state – Hindu Jagran Manch workers burnt an effigy of the politician in Sambhal and demanded that he be tried for treason.

Azam Khan’s foot-in-mouth moments

Khan is known for making contentious comments. On May 28, he had said girls should avoid places where they can be molested. In December 2016, he had to offer an unconditional apology in the Supreme Court for calling a gangrape in Bulandshahr, where highway robbers had assaulted a minor girl and her mother, a “political conspiracy”.

In October 2015, he had blamed mobile phones for the rising number of rape cases in India.

In another incident in 2015, the SP leader had allegedly advised a rape survivor, who had approached him for help, to not seek “fame and attention” for her “disgrace”. The woman had complained that three men had raped her in a moving car and stabbed her husband.