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Delhi Riots: How A Delhi Police Investigating Officer Framed 9 Muslim Men For An Attack By A Hindu Mob

A Delhi police investigating officer used planted witnesses and concocted statements to fabricate a case against nine Muslim men charged with setting fire to an eatery run by a Muslim man, which, a judge found, was attacked by the Hindu mob during the Delhi riots in February 2020. Dismissing the case in March this year, one of at least 60 cases to be so dismissed in four years, the judge said the statements were “artificially prepared”.

#delhi #DelhiRiots #DelhiPolice #AntiMuslimRiots #HinduMobs #IndianMuslims #CAA #AntiCAAProtests #torture #india

article-14.com/post/delhi-riot

article-14.comDelhi Riots: How A Delhi Police Investigating Officer Framed 9 Muslim Men For An Attack By A Hindu MobA Delhi police investigating officer used planted witnesses and concocted statements to fabricate a case against nine Muslim men charged with setting fire to an eatery run by a Muslim man, which, a judge found, was attacked by the Hindu mob during the Delhi riots in February 2020. Dismissing the case in March this year, one of at least 60 cases to be so dismissed in four years, the judge said the statements were “artificially prepared”. The police have so far claimed this case was one of those that sparked the riots on 23 February 2020. Two-thirds of those killed in the riots were Muslim. Eighteen of the 20 accused of planning the violence are Muslim.

And Then Came Advani

Excerpt from Aakar Patel's 'Our Hindu Rashtra' (Westland, 2020)

The Ayodhya issue had actually been launched by the non-political groups inside the RSS, led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. At a meeting in UP in 1983, Rajendra Singh, who would later become RSS chief, demanded that the Babri Masjid be opened to Hindu devotees. In September 1984, the VHP began a campaign against the mosque. This received sufficient public response for the group to claim in 1986 that they would forcibly break the locks open. Rajiv Gandhi succumbed to the pressure and the government told the courts there would be no law and order problem if this happened. The locks were thus opened and Hindus allowed into the mosque.

But the VHP did not stop with being given access to worship at the site: its target was the destruction of the mosque. In February 1989, at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the VHP said it would lay the foundation stone for the temple in November. This would involve the making of bricks across the country with Ram’s name embossed on them and their being carried in processions through towns and villages to Ayodhya in November.

Till this time, Advani writes in his autobiography, a few members of the BJP like Vijayaraje Scindia and Vinay Katiyar had participated in the Ayodhya movement in their individual capacity. It was not an issue in mainstream politics. In June, at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Himachal Pradesh, Advani threw the party behind the issue. The BJP resolution demanded that the site ‘should be handed over to the Hindus’ and ‘the mosque built at some other suitable place’. The whole thing was now coloured with religious sentiment.

Elections came a few months later, in November 1989. The BJP’s manifesto now made its first reference to Ayodhya: ‘By not allowing the rebuilding of the Ram Janma Mandir in Ayodhya, on the lines of Somnath Mandir built by the government of India in 1948, it has allowed tensions to rise, and gravely strained social harmony.’ It was a violation of the BJP’s own constitution, which on its first page and opening articles pledged it would bear true faith and allegiance to the principle of secularism.

A few days before voting, the VHP brought all its processions from across India to Ayodhya and laid the foundation stone next to the mosque.

Powered by its divisive, anti-Muslim demand, Advani’s BJP won 85 seats, four times as many as the Jana Sangh in the last election it contested alone and more than forty times as many as Vajpayee had delivered in his reformed and renamed party. Advani had become the most successful political leader from the RSS and had found the recipe for electoral success. He began to invest more in the issue that had brought the dividend.

The Congress lost its majority in the election, and a coalition led by V.P. Singh took power with support from Advani, though for only a short period. Three months after the election, in February 1990, the VHP resumed its mobilisation against the mosque and said it would continue the process of what it called kar seva from October.

The political escalation, according to Advani, happened by accident. Advani writes in his autobiography that in June he was to visit London, and just before he left he was interviewed by the editor of the RSS journal Panchajanya who asked him what would happen if the government failed to resolve the Ayodhya matter. Advani told him that the BJP supported the decision to begin kar seva on 30 October, and if it was stopped there would be a mass movement led by the BJP.

‘Frankly, I had forgotten about this interview,’ Advani writes, when his wife telephoned him and asked, ‘What have you said? The papers here have reported it with blaring headlines: “On Ayodhya, Advani threatens the biggest mass movement in the history of independent India”.’ Advani adds: ‘The die had been cast.’

After this, Advani says he offered the Muslims a deal. If they would hand over the Babri Masjid, he would ‘personally request’ the VHP to not campaign against two other mosques in Mathura and Varanasi. He writes that he was ‘deeply disappointed’ and ‘annoyed’ that this was not considered to be satisfactory by the Muslims. He announced he would begin his campaign against the mosque on Deendayal Upadhyaya’s birthday, 25 September, in Gujarat, and ride a ‘chariot’ (actually a truck) to Ayodhya on 30 October 1990. [...]

At each stop along the way Advani went about talking about why the Babri Masjid had to be taken down, using the vocabulary and metaphors of religion, in basic speeches that he says were no more than five minutes long. The reduction can only be imagined; the consequence was predictable. The scale of the violence unleashed by Advani’s decision to politicise a communal issue and mobilise on it was staggering in both the numbers killed and the geographical spread.

B. Rajeshwari of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in her work, Communal Riots in India: A Chronology 1947-2003, writes: ‘The mobilisation campaign for kar sevaks to construct the proposed Ram Janma Bhoomi Temple at Ayodhya on 30 October 1990 aggravated the communal atmosphere in the country. Communal riots occurred in the wake of L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra wherever it went. These riots were led by RSS-BJP men to consolidate the “Hindu” vote bank. They were widespread over almost all the states from Assam to West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi.’

Between April 1989 and April 1990, Gujarat recorded 262 dead, mostly Muslim. In October 1990, days after Advani’s yatra began, 41 were killed in Ahmedabad. The same month, 52 were killed in Jaipur, 20 in Jodhpur, 33 in Lucknow, over 100 in Delhi, 37 in Assam, 18 in Patna and 165 in Hyderabad. Also in October, a pogrom against Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar, saw 960 killed of whom about 900 were Muslim, In November, 31 were killed in Agra, again mostly Muslim and 13 in Indore. In December, 60 were killed in Karnataka and 134 in Hyderabad.

Many parts of India remained tense for long periods of time. Between April and May 1990, three riots in Kanpur killed 30; between May and November 1991 more than 50 were killed in Varanasi. In May 1991, 26 including 24 Muslims were killed in Vadodara.

In October 1992, 44 were killed in Sitamarhi. On 6 December that year, immediately after the Babri Masjid was destroyed, pogroms against Muslims broke out in Surat where 200 died, of whom some 95 per cent were Muslim. In Bhopal in December, 143 were killed. The Bombay riots that broke out at the same time saw the more than 1,000 killed, mostly Muslim.

Advani absolves himself of any responsibility here. He accepts there was violence around India but acquits himself by saying, ‘There were indeed riots in several parts of the country, but none at all along the yatra trail.’ He asks: ‘Was my campaign anti-Muslim?’ and answers himself: ‘Not in the least.’ When the mobs he gathered began to shout, ‘Jo Hindu hit ki baat karega wohi desh pe raj karega’ (only those speaking of Hindu interest will rule India), Advani says he requested them to replace the phrase Hindu hit with rashtra hit. He adds: ‘I was, therefore, pained to see a section of the media carry reports that had sensational titles like “Advani’s blood yatra”.’ Other than this sympathy for himself, Advani has no comment on the killings in his book written fifteen years later.

Many of the riots broke out after calculated provocation. Rath Yatras and associated processions were deliberately taken through Muslim neighbourhoods. Violence was good because it led to polarisation and that made voter choice easy. Advani successfully polarised India from north to south and east to west, pitting Indians against their fellow countrymen and women and children.

The reward was a doubling of the BJP’s vote share. In the general elections held in mid-1991, the BJP got 20 per cent of the total vote and won 120 seats. In the first election held after the demolition, in 1996, the BJP won 161 seats.

Over 3,400 Indians were killed in the violence triggered by Advani’s anti-Babri Masjid campaign and it brought the BJP to the doorstep of power. Advani’s success was built on the corpses of Indians and cemented with their blood.

He writes the day the mosque was demolished was ‘the saddest day of my life’. Having assembled a mob and fired it up against the mosque, he says he was surprised that they immediately tore it down. As a mark of sacrifice, he says that when celebrations broke out on the dais he was sitting in he refused refreshment saying: ‘No, I will not have sweets today.’

The blood profits were not limited to the general elections. Northern states going to Assembly elections after the beginning of the anti-Babri Masjid campaign fell to the BJP for the first time in the party’s history as it won majorities on the back of anti-Muslim mobilisation.

There were BJP chief ministers in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh in 1990, Uttar Pradesh in 1991, Gujarat in 1995 and Maharashtra in coalition with the Shiv Sena the same year.

Advani made the BJP India’s dominant political force. The Babri demolition and the communal violence in its wake also gave the party the template to further expansion. It would abandon or disregard everything that its manifestos claimed, from mechanisation in the economy to limiting private property to prohibition to Swadeshi to throwing English out to Integral Humanism and the other mumbo-jumbo. The BJP would concentrate its politics on India’s Muslims and focus on those issues alone on which Indian society could be divided and kept on the boil.

As India’s religious polarisation intensifies, I miss the Bohra Diwali celebrations of my childhood

A silver coin would be bought on Dhanteras. New account books would be opened. The entire clan would gather to celebrate the festival. Farida Pacha writes. (Article from November 2021)

#diwali #deepavali #bohras #muslims #gujarat #hindutva #IndianMuslims #syncretism #HinduMobs #AntiMuslimRiots #india

scroll.in/article/1009566/as-i

Scroll.in · As India’s religious polarisation intensifies, I miss the Bohra Diwali celebrations of my childhoodBy Farida Pacha

Delhi Riots: High Court To Hear Bail Pleas Of Sharjeel Imam, Others Afresh Following Elevation Of Justice Siddharth Mridul As CJ Of Manipur HC

The Delhi High Court will hear afresh the bail pleas of Sharjeel Imam, Khalid Saifi and other accused persons in relation to the Delhi riots larger conspiracy case, after the elevation of Justice Siddharth Mridul as Chief Justice of Manipur High Court. A division bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Shailender Kaur will start hearing the appeals now from January 2024.

#DelhiRiotsCase #DelhiHC #DelhiRiots #SharjeelImam #GulfishaFatima #SiddharthMridul #AntiMuslimRiots #hindutva #india

livelaw.in/high-court/delhi-hi

Nuh Riots Correspond to Larger Persecution of Region's Muslims: Fact-Finding Team

A fact-finding team constituted by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism found that Nuh's residents were resentful about how easily its Muslim youth were abducted or killed while the culprits enjoyed impunity.

thewire.in/communalism/nuh-rio

The WireNuh Riots Correspond to Larger Persecution of Region's Muslims: Fact-Finding TeamA fact-finding team constituted by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism found that Nuh's residents were resentful about how easily its Muslim youth were abducted or killed while the culprits enjoyed impunity.

In Gurugram, 60 days after arson and fire

Two months after violence hit Delhi’s corporate suburb, Muslims who fled their temporary houses to go back to West Bengal, where they felt safer, are back. At home, in some of the State’s least developed areas mainly bordering Bangladesh, there are few jobs and little opportunity. Caught between hunger pangs and threats, Alisha Dutta and Samridhi Tewari ask why they picked the latter.

thehindu.com/news/national/in-

The Hindu · In Gurugram, 60 days after arson and fire  Sabina Khatun, Robiul Mullah, Mansura Bibi, Nazia Bibi, Giasuddin, Anupama Pringunayap, Raju Mandal, and Rafiq: Fleeing violence, Bengali Muslim migrants in Gurugram's Sector 70A face job loss and heartbreak. Despite police efforts, fear of persecution lingers.

Delhi High Court issues fresh notice to BBC over defamatory documentary on Modi

The Delhi High Court on Monday issued fresh notice to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on a plea by an NGO seeking damages, claiming its documentary "India: The Modi Question" casts a slur on the country's reputation and makes false and defamatory imputations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian judiciary.

telegraphindia.com/india/delhi

Telegraph India · Delhi High Court issues fresh notice to BBC over defamatory documentary on ModiBy PTI

Vajpayee Govt Didn't Object to UK Report That 2002 Riots Were 'Pre-Planned', Cops 'Told Not to Act'

The minutes of an April 16, 2002 phone call between former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and his UK counterpart reveal the BJP-led government only protested the leak of the report and its claimed death toll. No criticism was made of the UK report's critical observations about the role played by the Gujarat police and by political organisations connected to Modi in the anti-Muslim violence.

thewire.in/diplomacy/exclusive

The WireExclusive: Vajpayee Govt Didn't Object to UK Report That 2002 Riots Were 'Pre-Planned', Cops 'Told Not to Act'The minutes of an April 16, 2002 phone call between former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and his UK counterpart reveal the BJP-led government only protested the leak of the report and its claimed death toll. No criticism was made of the UK report's critical observations about the role played by the Gujarat police and by political organisations connected to Modi in the anti-Muslim violence.

How ‘Kashmir Files’ added to communal fires in Khargone that ended with bulldozer injustice

A Ram Navami riot left both Hindus and Muslims hurt. But Muslim properties were singled out for demolitions, setting off a new, disturbing trend in India. (Article from April 2022)

scroll.in/article/1022860/how-

#KashmirFiles #bollywood #MadhyaPradesh khargone #AntiMuslimRiots #HinduMobs #RamNavamiRiots #kashmir #VivekAgnihotri #hindutva #FascistCinema #cinema #india

Scroll.inHow ‘Kashmir Files’ added to communal fires in Khargone that ended with bulldozer injusticeBy Supriya Sharma