In the town of Byadgi, Haveri district, Karnataka, another distressing incident of sharia policing has come to light. The episode transpired as two youths from different religious backgrounds were riding a bike and engaged in conversation by the roadside.
The situation took a disconcerting turn when a group, comprising 9 Muslim youths, harassed the Muslim woman who was seen in the company of a Hindu male work colleague Jagadish near a Shiva temple. The incident occurred as the woman was returning from the residence of relatives in Agasanahalli village, and Jagadish was apparently giving her a lift on his bike. Both the Hindu man and the Muslim woman were assaulted by the mob.
Bystanders informed the police, and later the father of the girl lodged a complaint against nine individuals involved in the sharia policing episode. “Why did you come with him on the bike?” the group of Muslim youths questioned the girl, while engaging in the assault. They are accused of dragging and slapping the woman, striking her with a stick, molesting her, and issuing death threats.
Seven of the accused Islamists, identified as Abdul Mudgal, Mansur Tandur, Mehabobsab Badigere, Riyaz Halager, Alfaz Balegar, Abdul Desur, Khadar Kanake, Saleem Kahji, and Mehabobali Halagere, now face charges under Indian Penal Code (IPC) 143, 147, 341, 323, 354, 504 and 506. These charges include rioting, criminal intimidation, assault, and outraging modesty. Two people are currently avoiding arrest, leading to a search operation.
The arrest of seven individuals has added to the prevailing tension in the area, following the recent sharia policing case in the same Haveri district, in Hangal, wherein a married Muslim woman was abducted and gangraped after she was spotted with a Hindu man. 11 men have been arrested in that case thus far.
The surge in sharia policing cases comes on the back of a massive radicalization campaign which is believed to be taking place through hardline Islamic outfits like Tablighi Jamaat/Deoband/JeI/JuH. A prominent Sunni Muslim Sufi scholar who is a product of seminaries like Nadwatul and Deoband, Sajjad Nomani, and who also happens to be the spokesperson of the AIMPLB (All India Muslim Personal Law Board), has been at the forefront of spreading the ‘Bhagwa Love Trap’ conspiracy theory and even instigating Muslim parents to stop sending their daughters to school/college to ‘save’ them. Unsurprisingly, Nomani is a Taliban cheerleader. Such Islamist fundamentalists who have been mainstreamed by Indian Secularism would like nothing better than to reduce the whole of Bharat to the state Pakistan and Afghanistan are in today.
These hardline outfits & leaders are instructing the maulvis in charge of local mosque-madrassas to incite Muslim youth to form sharia enforcement gangs against the ‘Bhagwa Love Trap’ conspiracy theory, which claims that ‘RSS is training Hindu men to trap Muslim women for affairs/marriage’.
Although Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Home Minister G. Parameshwar have given instructions to police to act against ‘moral policing’, analysts believe the focus of the govt is to clamp down on Hindu activists who try to protect minor girls from grooming jihad, while Congress’ minority appeasement has emboldened Islamist radicals to do as they please.
