External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj earned plaudits recently for the way she decided to take on the trolls of her own party, the BJP, after they gave her grief for fast-tracking passport applications of an interfaith couple.
On Saturday, the external affairs minister’s husband, Swaraj Kaushal took a leaf out of his wife’s book to shut up a right-wing troll. This was after a Twitter user, Mukesh Gupta, who claimed to be from IIT Delhi, posted abhorring remarks targeting the external affairs minister.
Tagging Swaraj Kaushal, the troll had written “When she (Sushma Swaraj) comes home tonight why don’t you beat her up and teach her not to do Muslim appeasement tell her Muslims will never ever vote for BJP (sic)”
Few hours later, Swaraj Kaushal copied his incredibly objectionable tweet, which called for violence against the union minister, and wrote, “Friends, please see this.”
Friends, please see this :https://t.co/WTm8aj6hyd
— Governor Swaraj (@governorswaraj) June 30, 2018
Faced with public shaming, Gupta decided to make a hasty exit and deleted his tweet. But, little did he realise that Kaushal had already taken the screenshot of his tweet. The union minister’s husband posted a new tweet with the screenshot of Gupta’s tweet.
https://twitter.com/governorswaraj/status/1012949727774535680
In a separate tweet, the right-wing troll had asked, “who else can teach @SushmaSwaraj a lesson or two. (sic)” He had then followed it up with equally violent tweet, “Sure I agree Sushma does need a lesson or two (sic)”
Last week, as many as 30,000 Facebook users had attacked the union minister’s personal page to post negative reviews in order to bring its ratings down. Faced with incessant trolling, Swaraj had removed the ‘reviews’ button from her page.
The BJP’s troll army had then attacked her using calls for assassination and insulting remarks.
