Sena boss for ban on burqa after it’s used to steal baby

Oct 20, 2010 - Prasad Patil |

mumbai

Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray has demanded a ban on the burqa following a recent case of child stealing at a city hospital. “If the burqa is going to be used to steal children, we demand that it be banned,” he wrote Tuesday in an editorial in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna.

A two-month-old baby had been stolen from the V.N. Desai Municipal Hospital at Santa Cruz (East) by a burqa-clad woman who befriended the infant’s grandmother and fled with the child saying she was taking the child to her mother.
The Sena chief urged Muslim organisations and leaders to take the lead in calling for a burqa ban.
“Would Islam accept it if the burqa was being used to steal children? Such an act is anti-Islamic,” Mr Thackeray wrote.
Maharashtra minister of state for medical education Varsha Gaikwad opposed the Sena chief’s demand, calling it politically motivated.
Baby stealing was a sensitive social issue and “there is no need to bring religious sensibilities into it.”
Ms Gaikwad said she would meet state home minister R.R. Patil to discuss how such incidents could be stopped.

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