BJP’s firebrand MLA Sangeet Som said on Friday that people like Sharjeel Imam,  who talk about “breaking India”, should be “shot dead publicly”. The MLA’s reaction came a day after a gun-wielding man opened fire on anti-CAA protesters near Jamia Millia Islamia, injuring a student.

Controversial legislator Som from Sardhana in Uttar Pradesh is known for making fiery statements and inviting controversies. He is also an accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots case of 2013 said, “The women sitting on protests have no work, a probe is needed to find out the source of funding of these protests. As far as people like Sharjeel Imam, who talk of breaking India, are concerned, such people should be shot dead publicly.”

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Sharjeel a research scholar of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who was booked for sedition case by the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police on January 28 after his alleged speeches went viral on the social media wherein he was heard speaking about Assam’s possible secession from the country in the wake of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

In a video that went viral on January 25, Sharjeel Imam is seen talking about splitting the northeast from India to block the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). “We know how Muslims are being treated in Assam. We have to save people from the NRC. The only way to do this is by cutting off northeast from India.”

A graduate in computer science from IIT-Mumbai, Sharjeel Imam had shifted to Delhi for pursuing research at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU. He was slapped with a sedition case after his alleged speeches went viral on the social media wherein he was heard speaking about Assam’s possible secession from the country in the wake of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

Som’s statement came in the context of anti-CAA protests at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh and Lucknow’s Clock Tower, where hundreds of women have been staging a sit-in against the new citizenship law for over a month. Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh has emerged as an epicenter of the anti-CAA protest where the protesters are sitting since December 15 demanding the government to withdraw the law. While, Lucknow’s Clock Tower has become aanti-CAA protest site replicatingShaheen Bagh.

On Thursday, women in Aligarh also joined in by sitting on an indefinite dharna at Eidgah, even as the police booked 250 of them for unlawful assembly.

Som, known for his extreme political views had earlier called  Asaduddin Owaisi, president of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) an agent of Pakistan for opposing the CAA in Parliament. He also attacked the Congress over the issue, saying that both the Congress and Owaisi ‘should go to Pakistan’.

“Both Congress and Owaisi will have to go to Pakistan if they do not change their attitude especially when a Bill is being introduced for the welfare of our country…

“The Congress and Owaisi eat and breathe in our country but they speak on the political and diplomatic line that suits Pakistan,” he had said.

The controversial CAA seeks to provide citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have faced religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan and have arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014.