SP leader sacked over Yakub widow remark

MUMBAI: The Samajwadi Party has sacked its Maharashtra vice-president Mohammed Farooque Ghosi for demanding a Rajya Sabha nomination for Yakub Memon's wife Raheen.
A day after Yakub was hanged, Ghosi stirred a controversy with his letter to party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav addressing Raheen as a "helpless" woman who deserved to be an MP.
"Ghosi breached the party discipline and wrote this letter without consulting me. The party has distanced itself from this letter and sacked him from the post.
We never said that Yakub was innocent. We had endorsed the view of several eminent citizens in the city who felt Yakub deserved lesser punishment as he had surrendered and helped our agencies in investigations into the 1993 blasts," said an embarrassed Abu Asim Azmi, SP state unit chief and MLA from Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar.
On being contacted, Ghosi told the TOI that these were his personal views.
"These are my personal views. We have freedom to express our views. It was on my mind and so I expressed it through the letter to our party president. The party has nothing to do with it," he said.
Party functionaries, however, countered this claim.
"He cannot call it his personal view as he wrote it on the party letterhead. He did it with the ulterior motive of getting cheap publicity which he got as the media played it up to the hilt," said SP spokesperson Kader Chaudhary.
In his letter to the Samajwadi Party supremo, Ghosi said: "You are our leader and a socialist who has always raised the voice of helpless and downtrodden.
Today even Raheen Memon appears helpless. Similarly there will be many helpless in the country and we have to fight for their cause. Every Muslim today is feeling helpless. We should be with them and make Raheen Memon an MP, making her voice of these helpless people."
"You are our leader and a socialist who has always raised the voice of helpless and downtrodden. Today even Raheen Memon appears helpless. Similarly there will be many helpless in the country and we have to fight for their cause. Every Muslim today is feeling helpless. We should be with them and make Raheen Memon an MP, making her voice of these helpless people."