Allow RSS workers to carry weapons: Ex-BJP Minister S Suresh Kumar

Bengaluru: Former Karnataka minister and senior BJP leader S Suresh Kumar on Monday said RSS workers should be allowed to arm themselves, reports Times of India.

Suresh Kumar while addressing a protest in Shivajinagar against the murder of a local RSS functionary Rudresh R by two bike-borne men, said if police fail to provide protection, then RSS workers should be allowed to keep their arms.

“The murders of Kuttappa, Praveen Poojari, Raju and Rudesh (all RSS workers) make it clear that police are not able to protect them. We have asked the police commissioner to give us weapons licences if they can’t protect our workers,” he elaborated later when asked to explain his remark. “We are not victims. We are warriors. We know how to protect ourselves!” said Kumar.

Time and again the state government and police have been failed to protect the RSS workers and the organisation is time after time targeted, he alleged.

However, the RSS and other senior BJP leaders distanced themselves by saying it could be former law minister’s personal opinion.

Linking Rudresh’s murder to killing of BJP and RSS functionaries in different part of the country, senior BJP leader Shobha Karandlaje, said “there is a feeling that these killings are part of a planned conspiracy.”

Rudresh, a 35-year old RSS worker, was hacked to death by two motorcycle-borne men who struck him with machete on Kamaraja Road, when he was returning home on a bike after attending an RSS event.

RSS has called for a bandh in Shivajinagar area, where the murder took place following which prohibitory orders have been clamped in four police station limits of the eastern zone of the city Commissionerate limits till midnight.