Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday supported an online petition against Union Minister Jayant Sinha that seeks the withdrawal of his Harvard alumni status after he was seen garlanding eight men convicted of lynching a Muslim meat trader in Jharkhand.

The petition was started by a Master of Public Policy student at Harvard University, where Mr. Sinha completed his MBA.

Online support

Tagging the online petition, Mr. Gandhi tweeted, “If the sight of a highly educated MP and central minister, Jayant Sinha, garlanding and honouring criminals convicted of lynching an innocent man, fills you with disgust, click on the link and support this petition.”

Mr. Sinha courted controversy last week after photographs of him garlanding the convicts at his residence in Hazaribagh (Jharkhand) surfaced in the public domain.

On Monday, the Congress demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi sack the junior Civil Aviation Minister immediately, else it would seem that the Prime Minister approved of Mr Sinha’s act.

Mr Sinha, however, defended himself on Twitter and claimed that “he unequivocally condemns all acts of violence and rejected any type of vigilantism”.

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