One Asim Hussain (46) was thrashed by fellow train passengers in Moradabad, UP on Friday after he molested a woman passenger. After initially staying quiet, Hussain lodged a complaint a day later after allegedly being instigated by some reporters to give a religious spin to the incident and alleged that he was assaulted for ‘refusing to chant Jai Sri Ram’. He added that ‘his beard was pulled’, for good effect.

True to the playbook of secular-Islamist media and politics, many mainstream media outlets decided to make a victim out of Hussain and project the incident as one of ‘Hindutva fascism’. Immediately, the fake news went viral –

Even some Hindi language outlets like Zee News, Aaj Tak sang the same tune. Asaduddin Owaisi, leader of the radical Hyderabad-based Islamist party AIMIM, picked up on this incident and took a jibe at RSS head Mohan ji Bhagwat. The same Owaisi had nothing to say about the tragic suicide of a minor Hindu girl, who couldn’t bear the harassment of a Muslim man and his family to convert and marry, which was reported from Lucknow recently. Or when another minor Hindu girl was pushed to death by her Muslim stalker in Lucknow before that.

The incident occurred when Asim Hussain was travelling from Delhi to Moradabad on Padmawat Express. After a woman objected to Hussain’s sexual harassment, a heated argument broke out in the compartment between him and other passengers and he was beaten up.

By the time a railway police team present in the train reached the compartment, Hussain had already alighted from the train. The woman who had first raised the alarm also wasn’t around, claims police. But police investigation confirmed that the incident took place over molestation of a woman, and not due to the reasons Hussain later claimed.

Despite no complaint being lodged by anyone, two Hindu laborers, Satish (23) from Rae Bareli and Suraj (25) from Pratpgarh were booked by police on charges of ‘breach of peace’ and handed over to GRP (Government Railway Police) officials at the Bareilly Junction.

“They were produced before a magistrate and released on bail,” said Circle Officer, (CO) Moradabad (Railway) Devi Dayal.

It was only 24 hours later that Hussain approached Government Railway Police Station in Moradabad to file an FIR on Saturday alleging that assailants ‘pulled his beard, forced him to chant a religious slogan, and took Rs 2,200 from his pocket’.

“During preliminary investigation, it was found that allegations made by Hussain that assailants pulled his beard and forced him to chant a religious slogan are false,” said Superintendent of Police, Railway (Moradabad), Aparna Gupta.

OpIndia also spoke to police officer Devi Dayal, who confirmed that police probe revealed that Hussain is giving wrong details on the incident. He added that Asim Hussain was misbehaving with some woman on the train, which angered some passengers, and they assaulted him for that reason. Now that Hussain has lodged an FIR, steps are being taken to arrest the 2 Hindu laborers.

Defaming the Hindu Dharmic slogan ‘Jai Sri Ram’ and projecting it as an ‘anti-Muslim war cry’ has been a favorite tactic of Hinduphobes. This report lists 20 such incidents where the ‘Jai Shri Ram’ angle was inserted to spin a random incident as a ‘hate crime’.

Satish and Suraj – heroes or villains?

Such incidents barely make the news cycle, unless media adds masala and fake spin of ‘Muslims under attack’. The reality is that Hindu girls and women are being preyed upon by Islamist sexual predators across the length and breadth of our country. The following indoctrination by Muslim clerics and community leaders has had a devastating effect on women’s safety, especially in mixed population areas:

• Hindu women are considered ‘immoral’ and legitimate targets for sexual exploitation. There have been instances of Islamist predators stating that sex with a Hindu female will ‘earn them jannat‘, or ‘sawab (spiritual merit) equivalent to a Haj pilgrimage‘
• Non-Muslims are ‘fallen, uncivilized, hell-bound’ people who can only be ‘saved’ by converting them to Islam.
• Pro-Hijab rhetoric such as ‘everything which is valuable needs to be covered up’, or that ‘girls who do not wear hijab/burqa are asking to be raped’ further instills the outlook that Hindu women are ‘roaming naked‘ and ‘asking for it’.

Even ex-Muslims have admitted the kind of indoctrination rampant in mosques and madrasas – “As per Quran and Hadiths, if you get a non-Muslim into Muslim fold, jannat (paradise) is ensured. Marrying and converting a Hindu girl is a short cut to paradise (jannat).“

The recent suicide of a minor Hindu girl, Sonam, from Lucknow we referenced earlier in the article shows just how little trust the ordinary Hindu has in police, judiciary and our criminal justice system. When asked why he didn’t approach police earlier when his daughter was being repeatedly harassed and threatened by Rafiq Siddiqui and his family for 4 years, the distraught father Santram Sharma could only say “we are poor people…”

In Delhi, Pankaj Mishra approached a beat constable after his daughter was being harassed and stalked by a local Muslim youth. The constable promised he would ‘talk to the youth’, but did nothing and the minor girl Naina Mishra was shot at by Armaan Ali and his accomplices while returning from school.

In 2018, when a newly-wed female passenger travelling in the Garwhal Express was molested near Moradabad and lodged a complaint with railway police, police later claimed that the accused was ‘mentally unstable’ and that no official complaint had been filed! In April 2022, a woman passenger was robbed but Moradabad GRP refused to file a complaint. Will such cases inspire confidence in ordinary citizens?

There are countless such incidents which speak to the inability of our secular state to create an effective deterrence against hate crimes targeting Hindus. Murders of Kanhaiyalal Teli and Umesh Kolhe also testify to how our police is conditioned and trained to downplay any reports of Islamist or evangelist aggression. A Muslim boy lurking suspiciously within a Dasna temple complex being slapped became bigger news than the fact that the temple in question had witnessed several robberies and even murders of mahants/pujaris. When even hardened criminals and terrorists are also let off/given parole in our system despite ‘life convictions’, it would be foolish to expect strict action against stalkers and sexual harassers even before they commit more serious crimes.

What should an ordinary citizen do in such a scenario? This is the same question that we have grappled with previously in the gau-rakshak debate when village volunteer groups that sprang up to battle the deadly beef smuggling mafia were demonized as ‘cow-terrorists’ by Hinduphobic media and elites.

How many times has media berated onlookers and passers-by for doing nothing when a woman was being molested? So did Satish and Suraj really commit a wrong? These two men were arrested for ‘breaching the peace’ even before Hussain filed a complaint against them. So why isn’t Hussain being charged for molesting a woman, despite the woman being currently untraceable? Most victims of sexual crimes are loathe to approach police, to escape the hassle and added emotional trauma inflicted by an apathetic, Adharmic system.