Babar Ali, a 25-year-old Muslim, died on Sunday after a brutal assault by his neighbours in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar district for participating in the BJP’s election campaign and celebrating its victory in the recently-held state polls, police said.

He was thrashed on March 20 in Kathargarhi and succumbed to his injuries during treatment at a hospital in Lucknow. When his body was taken to his village on Sunday, his family refused to perform the last rites and demanded the arrest of the perpetrators.

According to Babur’s family, their neighbours were miffed over the fact that Babur used to promote the BJP. After the results to the UP Assembly polls were declared on March 10 in which the BJP registered a landslide victory, Babur had distributed sweets in the locality, his family claimed. His neighbours had repeatedly warned him about not supporting the BJP, the family claimed.

Expressing grief over the incident, CM Yogi Adityanath has now ordered a probe into the incident.

This is the second known death of a BJP supporter for celebrating the party’s election victory. Satish Chauhan, reportedly from an SC aka Dalit community, was killed by SP supporters in Prayagraj. Local police initially tried to pass that off as a ‘road accident’ and assaulted BJP supporters who were protesting the attack, but later SI Ajay Yadav was suspended and a probe ordered.

Earlier, a Muslim woman from Bareilly was thrown out of her house and threatened with triple talaq by her husband and his uncle for voting for BJP, and praising Yogi and Modi for bringing the law against triple talaq.

Apart from this, BJP supporters were attacked in Siddharthnagar (Kali Maa temple desecrated and women assaulted), Kanpur Dehat (people assaulted in their own home), Auraiya (wedding procession attacked). The stone-pelting on Hindus celebrating Holi in Amroha, UP was initially depicted as Muslims objecting to DJ songs during namaz time. Later, it emerged that playing of BJP election songs and objections raised by Hindus to sexual misbehaviour with Hindu girls also ‘upset’ the ‘minority’.

During the elections, a woman BJP supporter was taken away from her house at gun point and raped by an SP candidate and supporters, who also assaulted other family members and looted valuables. Whether BJP-ruled state like UP or Opposition-ruled states like West Bengal or Kerala, it is the BJP supporter who is being targeted merely for exercising his/her democratic choice. This is the burden of ‘secularism’ that ordinary citizens are paying in this country while our elite deliver grand virtue-signaling sermons to the silent majority.

Self-appointed guardians of freedom of expression and democracy, the revered ‘public intellectuals’ like Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Ramchandra Guha et al have maintained absolute silence over this fascist oppression of BJP-supporting Hindus and Muslims by the forces of ‘secularism’.