The findings of two ongoing investigations, one by the Delhi police and the other by the National Investigative Agency (NIA), once again confront us with an exceedingly depressing picture of reality that prevails all throughout Bharat. The locations may be more than a thousand kilometres apart, the cast and characters may be different, the plots and conspiracies may differ, but the motives and methods are identical.
What emerges from the details of the investigation is a bleak story of violent communalism and its nexus with immoral, power-hungry and self-serving politicians with whose help violent Hindu hatred thrives with impunity.
Delhi police nails Tahir Hussain
On 23 March, the Delhi police submitted in court its charge-sheet against Tahir Hussain, a former Aam Aadmi Party councillor, and ten of his accomplices accused of planning, organising and carrying out targeted acts of violence during the 2020 Delhi riots. The court observes, “Tahir was continuously acting in a manner of supervising and motivating the mob.
All these things were done to target Hindus. Every member of the mob assembled participated in achieving the objective of targeting Hindus” and “such conducts show that they were acting out of the meeting of their minds and with a clear-cut objective in mind, to kill and harm Hindus.” The police has charged Tahir Hussain with motivating the crowd to attack the IB officer Ankit Sharma when he came into view.
The autopsy report of Ankit Sharma’s body found 600 stab wounds with sharp weapons, not a single area of the body spared. However, the conspiracy to murder Ankit Sharma was not specific to him. The court clarifies, “the accused persons were acting in pursuance to conspiracy and common object to kill Hindus [and] Ankit was killed because he was Hindu.”
Tahir Hussain was an AAP councillor when he committed these crimes. It occurred during the difficult days of the anti-CAA protest, when a main arterial road in the national capital was blocked by protestors on the pretext that the granting of citizenship to Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Christians persecuted in the Muslim countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan amounted to deadly persecution of Bharateeya Muslims.
Not just the political party Tahir Hussain belonged, but noisy and influential sections of the media, academics, activists, film personalities and politicians from other parties proclaimed Tahir Hussain’s innocence and said he was being targeted because he is Muslim. Now that the truth is out, it is proper to take names. Sanjay Singh, a senior AAP minister, claimed Tahir Hussain saved lives. Javed Akhtar, the famed lyricist, said Tahir Hussain was arrested because his name is Tahir.
Report after report appeared on print and electronic media casting aspersions on the Delhi police to shield Tahir Hussain from scrutiny. Arfa Khanum Sherwani, a rabid Hindu-baiting bigot posing as a journalist, even interviewed the absconding Tahir Hussain and broadcast his plea of innocence. The feverish coverage portraying Tahir Hussain in a positive light and supplying manifold pretexts and justifications in his defence will make a very substantive case study in the perversions of the public medium.
Bengal burning
On the same day, 23 March, the NIA arrested the 16th accused in a relatively forgotten but deeply striking case from Kolkata. The location was Ekbalpur, the date 10October 2022, the occasion Lakshmi puja. A Muslim mob attacked the puja premises, throwing bombs, effecting forceful entry and subjecting the attendees to beating with sticks, rods and brick bats.
Videos emerged of a Muslim mob occupying and vandalising a police station. Subsequently, the Calcutta High Court accepted the petitioners’ plea that the police was a silent spectator when they were subjected to a violent attack.
The NIA’s investigation has revealed the truth is more shocking than the claim of mute spectators made by the petitioners. The first charge-sheet filed on 8 January 2023 said “the accused hatched a criminal conspiracy to attack dwelling houses/shops of a people of a particular community by using crude bombs, petrol bombs, wooden sticks, brick bats and stones. Further, the accused persons, as part of an unlawful mob, prevented the Police force from entering Gali no.8 to control the riots and even assaulted Police personnel of Kolkata police” (NIA Charge-sheet 8 January 2023).
NIA’s supplementary charge-sheet filed on 14 March 2023 provided greater clarity. Replacing the phrase “particular community” of the first charge-sheet, it said, “Md Zeeshan Akbar, along with other co-accused, had hatched a criminal conspiracy and had mobilised an unlawful assembly with the intention to attack dwelling houses/shops of Hindu community.” The NIA thereby gave the stamp of its authority on what was already widely known: it was a violent hate crime carried out by a Muslim mob against Hindus celebrating a festival.
In response to the NIA’s contentions, an official spokesperson of the ruling Trinamool Congress stated, “The NIA is clearly saying there was a clash between two groups. But when they are eliminating one group and targeting just one group, it is the political line of the BJP. It is the responsibility of the NIA to establish the political line of the BJP” (Times Now 23 March 2023). Thus, the party that controls the state government and police is timidly accepting a challenge to its writ and monopoly of violence. Even the occupation of police stations is acceptable and not to be made into a political issue, if the occupiers are Muslims.
‘Secularism’ unbound
Though the events are separated by distance and time, their spirit and essence is one. The burden of incitement is always placed on Hindus, whose acts or words are held responsible for creating provocations for Muslims. In Delhi, it was the Parliament passing the Citizenship Amendment Act and Kapil Mishra; in Kolkata, it was loud and unruly festivities.
When planned acts of violence are carried out by Muslim mobs, ‘secular’ politicians and media begin to cry hoarse about the unfair and selective treatment meted out to Muslims for being Muslims – the grand narrative of Bharateeya ‘secularism’ wherein Muslims are always in danger of receding to second class citizenship and at threat of persecution/elimination from Hindu majoritarianism.
When eventually the truth of organised Muslim violence targeting Hindus is revealed through investigation, the victims either become ‘human who should not be categorised by their religion’ (to neutralise Ankit was killed because he was Hindu) or the investigators are accused of communal bias (ref. ‘attack on Hindu community’ in the NIA charge-sheet).
This is the sum and substance of ‘secularism’ in Bharat: to keep Muslims in good humour, ‘secular’ politicians are prepared to host cold-blooded butchers in their ranks and whitewash heinous crimes with Hindu blood. They go a step further, allow their security forces to be surrender, compromise law, order and the state’s writ to humour the Muslim.
Muslim crimes must be denied until all denial fails, and thereafter the Hindu must be made to share the guilt to even the scales. This astonishingly double-faced, contemptuous, self-loathing and perverted state of mind is, according to ‘secularists’, real Hindu Dharma and the slightest trace of combativeness in Hindus against it they brand fascism.
-By Rajdeep Sarkar
There are some so-called ‘secularists’ in the leftist parties and also in the Congress party to raise an outcry when Govt take any action or initiative to bring Muslims who committed heinous crimes to book. It is because of their support to gain political leverage, the offender Muslims are spared and considered with mercy by attaching minority label.
For legal point of view, this is gross injustice and must be appropriately addressed.