Belur Gopalakrishna’s ‘shoot and kill Modi’ goes viral

Congress leader Belur Gopalakrishna has courted controversy after a video of his saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be shot dead, went viral on Tuesday.

A month-old video showing a portion of Gopalakrishna’s speech at an event organized by the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee was circulated on social media, with the BJP demanding legal action against him for “instigating the assassination” of the prime minister.

“Those who speak for Nathuram Godse, the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi, should not be in this country, friends. If they try to kill the country’s democracy, if you have the guts, you should shoot and kill your Modi. You won’t have to kill anybody else,” Gopalakrishna is heard saying in the video.

Gopalakrishna was speaking at an event the party had organised on February 4 to condemn a Hindu group that enacted Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination.

In a tweet, BJP said Gopalakrishna had posed “a national threat” and urged Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Bengaluru City police commissioner to take action. “This is a national threat & this man is waging a direct war on the nation,” BJP leader and former minister Aravind Limbavali said in a tweet.

Gopalakrishna was earlier with the BJP. He joined the Congress in April 2018 after he failed to get the BJP ticket to contest from the Sagar Assembly constituency. Gopalakrishna had contested on the BJP ticket and defeated his relative and Congress candidate Kagodu Thimmappa in 2004 and 2008. He unsuccessfully contested on the JD(S) ticket in 2013.