Mangaluru: District Youth Congress president Mithun Rai on Monday urged government to ban the Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishat (ABVP), which is exploiting students for political gains.

He was speaking during a protest organised by the District Congress Committee, in front of the deputy commissioner’s office on Monday.

“Some organisations have been conspiring to destroy the image of the district. The college in Puttur was supporting saffron terrorism by involving their students in politics,” he alleged. He sought to know where the Durgavahini members were and urged them to protest against the Puttur gang-rape incident.

Former minister B Ramanath Rai said, “Atrocities on women have increased after the Modi government had come to power. In the gang-rape case, the ABVP took a U-turn, declaring that the accused are not their members.”

DCC President and MLC Harish Kumar accused the BJP of adopting double standards in the issue.

Puttur former MLA Shakuntala Shetty urged MPs Shobha Karandlaje and Nalin Kumar Kateel to speak in the Parliament about the gang-rape issue. “If one accused in the gang-rape incident had been from a minority community, entire Puttur would have been engulfed in violence. Those who outrage the modesty of girls should be given capital punishment and hanged in public,” she asserted.

She claimed that four girl students from a college in Puttur had committed suicide in their hostel. But the cases were given a neat burial, she added.

The protesters also shouted slogans against the ABVP and Karandlaje.