Image: Nithya Subramanian / Scroll.in
The screenshots of chats in a WhatsApp group named “ABVP DTU FRESHERS” are being circulated on social media and being condemned for the vile and pernicious conversations that they represent. What is believed to be a WhatsApp group of members of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) of the Delhi Technological University’s First year students, had conversations calling for mass targeted killings and kidnaping of people from the Muslim community.
One of the participants in the abovementioned chat suggested that bomb blasts should be done to “exterminate” Muslims while the other said that since Muslim women are not allowed to come out of their homes, one should kidnap them and make them “victims of bhagwa (saffron) love jihad”.
The conversation also veered towards “conversion” of Muslims. A participant in the Whatsapp conversation said, “Rather thinking of mass genocide think of mass conversion(sic)”. He/she further said that Muslim should be converted because they were also Hindu at some point and converted to Islam out of fear due to being lower castes. They also said that in Punjab and Assam Hindus are being converted to Islam. One other student suggested that Hindu Mahasabha and other right wing organizations “should start a course on how to marry Muslim girls and convert them to hindu (sic)”.
These were merely screenshots of one of the hundreds of thousands of such whatsapp groups that must be in existence where far right aligned people congregate and incite violence. Since these are private chats, these do not get disclosed/become public, but this is how an atmosphere –complicit and prepared for premeditated violence –is created. While examining the role of persons accused in the Delhi (2020) riots conspiracy case, where Umar Khalid, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and others are charged, the police have relied upon WhatsApp group chats of student committees to prove conspiracy angle. However, until today whatever chats have been produced by the police before courts, in bail hearings, no incitement to violence has been attributed to the accused and only calls for protest and organizing protest sites were discussed.
These chats allegedly from/ attributed to the ABVP group of first year students show how these young minds have deep hatred ingrained in them and how misinformation is rapidly spread only to fulfill the intent of the social unrest, as promoted by the radical right wing.
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