A landlord named Syed Salim (45) was arrested for installing hidden CCTV cameras to record women tenants who had rented his flat.

Salim owns a 5-storey building in Gayatri Hills near the posh Jubilee Hills area of Hyderabad, Telangana. While residing on the first floor himself, he had rented out the remaining flats, one of which was occupied by the women in question.

Two months ago, the victim, 20, working in a hostel along with her friend and a cousin moved into one of the flats. Soon, they began experiencing frequent power cuts in their flat. Seeking resolution, they contacted an electrician to inspect the electricity meter box located inside their room. To their shock, upon opening the meter box, they discovered a CCTV camera concealed within it.

Investigations revealed that the 45-year-old landlord had installed the covert camera to record the women while they were changing clothes. The camera was connected to a computer at Syed’s residence. The women promptly lodged a complaint with the Jubilee Hills Police and Syed Salim has been arrested and the electronic evidence confiscated.

SHO Jubilee Hills S Rajashekar Reddy said Salim was booked under 354C, 509 of the IPC and 67 of the IT act and is being produced before the court.

In a similar case from 2021, CCTV engineer Rashid (originally from Azamgarh, UP) routed the CCTV feed of a rich South Delhi couple’s home to his mobile, when he had gone there to make some repairs. The couple had installed CCTV cameras in all rooms of their house as they were both working professionals, and had a small daughter who was cared for by a nanny.

Rashid later started blackmailing the couple with their private videos. He was finally arrested from Bengaluru.

Such cases of Islamist service providers misbehaving with their non-Muslim customers, stalking/harassing them, are being reported with alarming frequency – see this, this, this, this, this, this. Coupled with the brutal crimes that Islamists routinely commit against Hindus, driven by toxic religious indoctrination that promises them spiritual rewards (sawab) or jannat (heaven, with promises of eternal virgins) if they convert a non-Muslim or have sex with a non-Muslim female, it is clear to the ordinary person (not Lutyens’ elites) that the community needs to deradicalize.

While we are seeing several sane voices from among the Indian Muslim community emerge on social media, they are still too weak to counter the poisonous agenda of the orthodox Muslim religious bodies and socio-political leadership. The Indian state is woefully equipped to tackle the Islamist menace, especially given the propensity of the entire Opposition and several Constitutional bodies to appease the most fanatical Muslim clerics, in the guise of ‘secularism’ and ‘freedom of religion’.

So, for now, the most practical solution to ensure minimum friction and religious tensions is for non-Muslim communities to maintain as much social distancing as they can. Unless the radicalization infrastructure which creates Islamist mindsets is uprooted, it will be better for overall social cohesion that strict social distancing is maintained across communities. Every minute we spend ignoring the elephant in the room, pushes us towards total anarchy and lawlessness and the inevitable backlash from a ‘majority’ under siege.