In a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi remarked on Tuesday that incidents of lynching were unheard of before the BJP came to power in 2014.

“Before 2014, the word ‘lynching’ was practically unheard of. #ThankYouModiJi,” tweeted Rahul Gandhi.

Reacting to Rahul Gandhi’s barbed remark, BJP national spokesperson Amit Malviya had this to say:

The Gandhi scion’s salvo came against the backdrop of two people being lynched in Punjab, a Congress-ruled state, after being accused of sacrilege at a gurdwara.

One man was beaten to death by a mob after an alleged desecration bid at the Golden Temple in Amritsar on Saturday evening. The following day, another man was lynched after he allegedly tried to commit sacrilege at a gurdwara in Kapurthala.

Last week, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai informed the Rajya Sabha that there is no separate data on people killed or injured by vigilante groups, mobs or crowds is maintained by the NCRB. He stated that the government has undertaken public awareness exercises to curb the menace of mob lynching.

He said the Centre has issued advisories to state governments and union territory administrators on July 23, 2019 and September 25, 2019 for taking measures to curb incidents of mob lynching in the country.