Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has lashed out at a Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker who opined parents must inculcate good values in their daughters to stop incidents of rape.

“This is the filthy RSS male chauvinist mentality at work,” tweeted Gandhi.

“Men do the raping but women need to be taught good values,” he added.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is the ideological mentor of the BJP, that presently governs Uttar Pradesh which has generated national and international headlines over crimes against women.

On being asked over the issue, BJP MLA for UP’s Ballia district, Surendra Singh said, “It’s the duty of all mothers and fathers to imbibe good values in their daughters and bring them up in cultured environments.”

“Such incidents can be stopped only with ‘sanskar’ [culture and values] and not with ‘shashan’ [governance] or talwar [sword],” he added, ANI UP reported.

Kumar’s remark came amid the nationwide outrage over the brutal assault of a 19-year old Dalit woman at UP’s Hathras. The woman was allegedly raped by four men on September 14. After fighting for her life for about a fortnight, she succumbed to her wounds at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led UP government has come under intense backlash not only for the assault but also for the handling of the case.

The woman’s family has alleged that she was forcibly cremated by police officers at night, against their wishes.

Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, also a Congress member visited the woman’s family on Saturday following a dramatic standoff with cops.