As reported in the Indian Express, Faisal Usman Khan, an Ola driver was on his way to Mumbai after he picked up his passengers from the Manav Kalyan hospital, Diva at around 03.00 AM on June 24. Midway, his car broke, so he took a halt on a bridge and switched on his parking lights. While he was trying to fix his car, three men on a bike came and started banging the windows. “I switched on the parking lights and was trying to restart the car when three men on a scooter came from behind and started banging the windows,” Indian Express quoted Khan as saying. “They were reeking of alcohol and wanted to know why I had stopped my vehicle in the middle of the road.”
Khan alleged that the perpetrators took his keys, dragged him and one of the passengers out and started abusing both of them. “The accused started hitting me with wires and when I screamed out loud ‘Ya Allah’, I was told to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ if I wanted to be spared,” Khan told the police. Later, one of the passengers called the police and immediately the accused fled. However, Khan had lost consciousness and by the time he regained it, his mobile phone was missing.
Khan had noted the bike number which helped the police recognize the accused. “The bike belonged to Jaideep Mundhe (26), who was riding it that day. We also arrested Mangesh Mundhe (30) and Anil Suryawanshi (22). All of them are residents of Agasan village. The accused do not have any previous cases against them,” a senior official told the Indian Express.
Initially, Khan had complained only of physical violence and theft as he was in an extreme state of shock and was worried about the “repercussions on his family.” “However, I later told senior officers at the police station the whole story. They assured me that I had nothing to fear,” he said.
The police arrested all the three accused on Tuesday. “We have booked them for deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs, robbery, voluntarily causing grievous hurt, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace, criminal intimidation, and common intention,” an unidentified police official said. All the three are in police custody.
This incident comes a week after a 24-year old Muslim man, Tabrez Ansari, was brutally beaten and forced to channt ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Jai Hanuman’ under the suspicion of theft in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. Four days later, he lost his life. In West Bengal, three men were pushed off a moving train on refusing to chant “Jai Shri Ram.”
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