In a horrific video that quickly went viral, Himank Bansal, a student at the ICFAI Business School in Dontanpally, Hyderabad was beaten and ragged by other students at the school and made to chant “Allahu Akbar” and “Jai Mata Di.”

The group of students are allegedly seen assaulting Bansal in the attack footage that was widely circulated on social media. In the video, the accused are heard allegedly threatening to beat him into a coma to “correct his ideology” after they allegedly forced him to shout religious slogans.

The videos can be watched here: 

The boy was assaulted bcz he is a Hindu pic.twitter.com/MtWW01VAXW

— ವಾಲಿ (@bhairav_hara) November 12, 2022

 The first-year student was stripped, abused, and forced to consume certain chemicals for making comments against the Prophet. The case was registered after Bansal approached the police complaining of being harassed by 15-20 individuals in his hostel room.

According to his account in the complaint, in a conversation with a female friend of his, he had made derogatory comments about Prophet Mohammad, which was allegedly then circulated by her to the accused; which is why they assaulted him.

In his complaint, given to police on November 11, Bansal stated that the incident occurred on November 1. According to the complaint, between 15 and 20 guys broke into his dorm room and attacked him while accusing him of hurting people’s religious feelings. He was physically assaulted and made to chant religious slogans while the attackers threatened him and his family. He claimed that he was being forced to remove his pants and that when he refused, he was made to consume chemicals. Bansal named many people in his complaint with respect to the assault. Bansal stated that he was also sexually assaulted, with one student trying to rip his clothes while others repeatedly punched him in the genitals.

The complaint may be read here:

The FIR, registered at Shankarpalli police station, has invoked charges under IPC Sections 307 (attempt to murder), 342 (wrongful confinement), 450 (trespassing), 323 (causing hurt) 506 (criminal intimidation), read with Section 4 of Telangana Prohibition of Ragging Act of 2011.

Post this video getting viral, hashtags such as #hindusunderattack and #jagohindu started trending on twitter.

On November 14, Cyberabad Police informed that the eight accused in this case have been arrested and sent to police custody. Legal action has been initiated against nine members of the college management for the incident, police said, as per MSN.

Related:

Madhya Pradesh: Muslim family brutally assalted in Chhindwara
Tripura: Muslim man lynched on suspicion of cattle theft
Where 4 Muslims were publicly flogged by cops, 39 others live in ‘exile’: Gujarat, Kheda
Tribal youths beaten, tonsured for entering pandal: Jharkand 

The post Forced to chant Religious Slogans in Hyderabad College after derogatory remarks against Prophet appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As reported in Sabrang India, Ansari who had come to his hometown, Jamshedpur, for a vacation, was returning back on a bike with two of his friends at night on June 18. Mid way, he was stopped by a group of men, tied to a pole and then brutally beaten up on the grounds that the bike he was travelling on was stolen by him, as it didn’t have a registration number. In the video that has gone viral on social media, it can be seen how the mob first asks his name and then forces him to say ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Jai Hanuman.’ The next day the villagers handed Ansari to the police with the allegedly stolen bike and strikingly, the police booked Ansari under the charges of theft and put him behind the bars.  When his condition worsened in the jail on June 21, he was taken to the Seraikela Sadar Hospital, where he died around 10am on Saturday. The family has alleged that Ansari’s death was the result of the brutal beatings by the mob and the apathy of police who, instead of treating him and taking action against the accused, put Ansari in the jail.

While this is just another case of mob lynching, which have unfortunately now become an everyday phenomenon, our analysis of such cases in the past one year reveals that there is a similar pattern in the way these crimes take place and the profiles of the accused, while the victims are mainly Muslims and then Dalits. In short, the attack on minorities by these lawbreakers is on a constant rise.

Increasing cases of mob lynching and the RSS-BJP connect:
Acts of mob lynching were not so rampant until 2015, before which there might have been one or two odd incidents. However, within one year of Narendra Modi-led BJP coming to power, which is infamous for its ideological roots in right-wing supremacism, these barbaric incidents have been on a rapid rise. The first incident post the BJP’s rule, that shook the entire nation was the lynching of a 55-year old Muslim farm worker, Mohammad Akhlaq, in Dadri, UP, when a mob brutally thrashed Akhlaq and his son Danish following an announcement at a temple that the family had consumed and stored beef, on September 28, 2015. Akhlaq succumbed to his injuries while Danish survived. Since then, a total of 179 people, both men and women, have been the victims of mob lynching of which 96 have lost their lives. The following graph on the number of victims who have lost their lives due incidents of mob lynching clearly reveals that the cases of mob lynching have increased in the BJP era.

A look at cases of lynchings in the last one year alone (June, 2018 to June, 2019) will reveal that 84 people were severely injured in these brutal attacks of which 50 died. Of the 84 victims, the highest were witnessed in Maharashtra (12), followed by Assam (11) and then Bihar (10). It is essential to note that all of the aforementioned states are BJP-ruled! The communally sensitive state of Uttar Pradesh had 8 victims, 7 in Jharkhand and Gujarat each. The lowest number of victims were in Manipur and Karnataka, with one victim each.
 

It is pertinent to note that of these 84 victims, 69 (i.e. 84%) were attacked by the local mob over the suspicion that they were illegally transporting cattle or beef or they had killed a cow, they were childlifters or they had robbed some commodity. The highest cases took place under the suspicion of the victims being childlifters followed by any cow-related activity (read as crime). In many of these cases, social media played a significant role in provoking the locals.

Right from the Akhlaq’s lynching to the latest case of Tabrez Ansari’s lynching, in majority of these cases the accused are a part of BJP or enjoy impunity due to BJP’s support. In the Dadri lynching case, involving 18 accused, one of the prime accused Hariom Sisodia, after being released on bail in October, 2017 had clearly said how BJP had promised to save them from any legal tussle but then failed to do so. He had said, “The BJP leaders said that we will ensure justice, we will make sure you are financially okay, and we will get you jobs. But they did nothing. I’m unemployed. The main thing was ‘case wapas ho jayega’, but that has not happened yet.” Further, Mahesh Sharma, a Union Minister and Lok Sabha lawmaker from Gautam Budh Nagar, attended the funeral of Ravi, Sisodia’s cousin, the 18th accused, who died in police custody in October 2017. Another accused, Vishal Singh, son of a local BJP leader Sanjay Rana, was seen in a BJP rally, addressed by the UP CM, Yogi Adityanath, in Bisada village in Greater Noida on March 31, 2019. In fact, in a brazen show of support, the Dadri BJP MLA, Tejpal Singh Nagar, had  promised jobs to all the accused in the National Thermal Power Corporation, Dadri on contract basis.

Take the Alwar lynching case of 2017, where a 55-year old Muslim dairy farmer, Pehlu Khan and his four sons were returning from Jaipur after purchasing a cattle and were stopped by a mob of self-appointed cow vigilantes. Despite showing relevant documents, Khan was beaten to death in Alwar, Rajasthan. The six accused were said to be affiliated to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the youth wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Shockingly, the then Union Minister,  Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, denied the reports and said, “No such incident took place as described by opposition in the house.”

In June 2018, Mohammad Qasim (38), a cattle trader, was lynched to death and  Samsuddin (65) brutally assaulted in Hapur, UP over rumours of cow slaughter. The key offender, Yudhistir Singh Sisodia, claimed responsibility for this act and also warned of similar consequence to others. In a sting operation conducted by NDTV, he blatantly said “Meri fauj tayaar hai. Koi gaaye kaate, s*** mai usko katwaa denge, s*** ko khade khade. Hazaar baar jail jaana pade jaayenge (My army is ready. If anyone slaughters a cow, we will kill them and go to jail a thousand times).” One wonders how he found the courage to say all this without the fear of any legal consequences? Was he sure of getting a bail? How did he get to enjoy the sense of impunity?

Cut to the recent lynching case in Jharhand, the key accused Pappu Mandal’s Facebook profile reveals his Hindutva ideology as well as his connection with or aspiration to connect with the BJP. In a December 8, 2014 post, Mandal uploaded a  photo with the BJP sash and captioned it as ‘BJP.’ Further, on March 26, 2018 he uploaded a photo with a sword and captioned it ‘Jai Shri Ram.’ Notably, Ansari was forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Jai Hanuman’ when he was being assaulted by Mandal and his goons.

Similar Modus Operandi and profiles of the accused:
Consider any mob lynching case and one will find a similar ‘modus operandi’ in majority of these cases along with a similar profile of the accused. Our analysis has revealed that whenever such an incident takes place, the victims are in transit in relatively remote areas and are suddenly and violently attacked by an angry mob, leaving them helpless and in no position to defend themselves. Even when the victims plead for their lives, the mobs are so “enraged”, that they refuse to even consider hearing them out. Further, as mentioned earlier, these attacks are the result of rumours in the villages, of the victim indulging in cow slaughter or being a childlifter. Strikingly, the attacks worsen as soon as the perpetrators come to know about the religious identity of the victims (mainly Muslims) and are then forced to say ‘Jai Shri Ram.’ Usually, the perpetrators asks the names of the victims, mostly to know their religious identity, especially in cases where the physical appearance (like a beard and a cap) doesn’t reveal it. The same thing happened in the recent lynching case of Tabrez Ansari.

Another finding is that the majority of the accused are either affiliated to a right-wing Hindutva organisation or directly to the BJP. It requires no in depth investigation to understand why these accused are ready to take the law into their own hands and punish the “culprits” (who are actually the victims) for theft or other crimes. It clearly means that they enjoy impunity and backing from ‘powerful forces’ giving them a freehand to act as per their wishes for protecting one common ideology- Hindutva. Here, it is pertinent to note that in 2018, the then Union Minister Jayant Sinha had “honoured and garlanded” eight accused in the Alimuddin Ansari lynching case in Ramgarh, Jharkhand, while they were out on bail. Just recently, Sinha revealed that the BJP paid the legal fees of the accused in the same lynching case. “They (accused) came from a poor family. Their family members requested us to assist them financially in order to help them in hiring an able advocate. I, along with other members of the party (BJP) helped them in paying for the advocate’s fees,” Sinha was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.

Further, it is well known how the police fails to take immediate action in such cases and how these accused easily get bails. As mentioned earlier, the majority of these cases have taken place in states where BJP is in power, either independently or through coalition.

Another common factor witnessed during these incidents is that of a gruesome spectacle: a group of people gather and act as mere spectators to the happenings without bothering to call the police or to stop the accused (the latter being a rare possibility considering that there can then be a threat to their own lives.) In fact, the spectators make videos and put them on social media! One wonders why? Is it because they are really scared to intervene during the violent happenings and raise a voice? Or is it because they, by their voyeuristic presence, signal approval to the ideology and the (oft trumped up) allegations against the victims? Are these accused, through their powerful organizations, successful in spreading this Hindutva ideology and thus influencing large sections of the locals? Are the spectators also being brainwashed? Finally, are those among the populace who may be dissenters, frightened into silence?
The slogan of ‘Jai Shri Ram’, too has become an unfortunate license to kill, a signal almost, which then works also silences the crowd? Is this a tactic, to assault in the name of God?

Also, when no legal action is taken against the accused, for whatever reasons, the locals end up vending towards the culture of an all pervasive impunity: believing that whatever happened was the right thing. When politicians, media etc choose to remain silent or supports such acts, the common public gets motivated to indulge in  more such acts that are finding “public sanction and approval.”

While the spectators choose to or are forced to remain silent, the media has played a notorious role when it comes to such cases of communal violence. Social media, especially Facebook and Whatsapp- especially, widely used social media platforms in rural India, have been used to circulate the videos of the attacks and to spread rumours about ‘childlifters’, ‘cow slaughterers’ or  robbers being present in the villages thereby instigating the locals.

Just to give a few instances, take the case of Dhule and Malegaon lynchings in 2018 where five people in each city were lynched to death over rumours circulated on Whatsapp that they were a part of a gang of childlifters. In fact, take any case of mob lynching over the years and one will find the active role of social media to either provoke the mob or to spread the videos of the attacks. Worse, these videos are shared in multiple pro-Hindutva groups, on Facebook as well as Whatsapp, spreading one same message to millions of viewers who end up believing that to be the final truth. When our politicians, including our Prime Minister, choose to remain silent on these issues or not even acknowledge their rising presence, the citizenry starts accepting it as the new normal.

Talking on the issue of misuse of social media leading to mob violence, Pratik Sinha co-founder AltNews, a fact-checking website says, “It’s unprecedented not just in India but globally. It is as serious as a breakout of an epidemic. Misinformation has been weaponized to target minorities, individuals, activists.”
Mental health experts say that people tend to believe messages sent through platforms like WhatsApp as they usually are sent by a trusted source. “As a result, doubts regarding the credibility of the source of the messages tend to get diluted. And therefore, we are inherently more likely to not think of rejecting the content of the message as being false or inauthentic,” said Samir Parikh, director of the department of mental health and behavioural sciences at Fortis Healthcare.

In short, social media has increasingly become the primary catalyst for self-styled cow vigilantes, as well, to bring to book those who have reportedly been indulging in cow slaughter or any other wrongdoings.

The next aspect of this analysis relates to the profiles of the accused. Strikingly, the majority of the accused come from poor households and aren’t literate enough. Such people are easy to be brainwashed by the powerful elite who wish to impose their ideology on the masses. We have also observed that these accused belong to the lower caste, like Pappu Mandal in the Tabrez Ansari lynching case, and work under the upper caste powerful people. In short, the upper caste men are the leaders and the lower caste the footsoldiers. This explains the impunity aspect and also the submission aspect where the ‘bosses’ take advantage of the caste dynamics and hierarchy, forcing the direct perpetrators to indulge in such activities, naturally with some incentives attached.

Why the reluctance to adhere to the SC directive on mob lynching?
While the second time Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, ensured that the minorities will be protected and they should not be made to worry, right after his re-election, we yet do not have a law despite an increasing number of lynching cases and the Supreme Court directive over the same. In July, 2018, a three-judge SC, comprising of the then Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra, Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud, had condemned the rising incidents of mob lynching across the nation and urged the Parliament to enact a law to deal with the crime that threatens the rule of law and the country’s social fabric. In a writ petition filed by Tehseen Poonawalla, the SC gave a list of directions, including preventive, remedial and punitive steps, to deal with the crime. Some of the directives are:
 

1. The state governments shall designate a senior police officer in each district for taking measures to prevent incidents of mob violence and lynching.
2. The state governments shall immediately identify districts, sub-divisions and villages where instances of lynching and mob violence have been reported in the recent past.
3. The nodal officers shall bring to the notice of the DGP any inter-district co-ordination issues for devising a strategy to tackle lynching and mob violence related issues.
4. It shall be the duty of every police officer to cause a mob to disperse, which, in his opinion, has a tendency to cause violence in the disguise of vigilantism or otherwise
5. Central and the state governments should broadcast on radio and television and other media platforms including the official websites that lynching and mob violence shall invite serious consequence .
6. Curb and stop dissemination of irresponsible and explosive messages, videos and other materials on various social media platforms. Register FIR under relevant provisions of law against persons who disseminate such messages.
7. Ensure that there is no further harassment of the family members of the victims.
8. State governments shall prepare a lynching/mob violence victim compensation scheme.
9. Cases of lynching and mob violence shall be specifically tried by designated court/fast track courts earmarked for that purpose in each district. The trial shall preferably be concluded within six months.
10. To set a stern example in cases of mob violence and lynching, the trial court must ordinarily award maximum sentence upon conviction of the accused person.
11. If it is found that a police officer or an officer of the district administration has failed to fulfill his duty, it will be considered as an act of deliberate negligence.

However, there has been a complete and wilful ignorance of the SC directive by both, the Central and the State governments. Despite the rising crimes, we yet do not have a statutory definition of ‘lynching’, let alone the punishment and procedure. In December 2018, Manipur became the first and the only state to formulate an anti-lynching law based on the SC directive. Since then, there are no talks about the need for such a directive as well. Instead our Prime Minister, on January 1, 2019, said that there is no need to politicise the mob lynchings. Contrary to what the data reveals, he said, “Any such incident doesn’t bode well of a civilised society. This is condemnable but did this start only after 2014? We all need to fight this together and make sure that such incidents don’t occur again.”
Mr. Modi needs to immediately introduce an anti-mob lynching bill in the Parliament, if his words are to be backed by action. We wait eagerly and watch.

A timeline of lynching cases in India since 2014 can be read here.

Related Articles:

1. The Idea Of India in the times of Mob Lynchings
2. Stop the political manufacturing of mob lynching and riots!
3. Cows are safer in Modi’s India than Muslims

The post ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and BJP connect, both a constant in mob lynching cases: Analysis appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Six of the men were travelling from Canning in South 24 Paraganas district in West Bengal to Hooghly. It was then that a group of men entered their compartment and began forcing them to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan. On refusal, they started thrashing them up.

Mannah Mullah, one of the victims, while speaking to ANI said that he wanted to chant the slogan but couldn’t because of the constant thrashing. He said, “Seven of us were attacked by a group of people, although I tried to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ I could not because they kept beating me up. Then they pushed me off the train with two more people.

Last week, another Muslim man, Mohammad Momin was similarly pushed off a train, while another Muslim youth, Tabrez Ansari was killed as a mob attacked him and made him chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’.

The post Three men in West Bengal pushed off moving train on refusing to chant “Jai Shri Ram” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

After Owaisi, the BJP representatives in the lower house continued their chanting ‘Jai Sri Ram’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ when Abu Taher Khan, the newly elected Member of the Parliament in West Bengal’s Murshidabad constituency and former Congress M.L.A in the State legislative Assembly approached for oath-taking. But ignoring the chanting, Khan started his oath-taking with ‘Bismillahi-ar-rahman- ar-rahim’ (in the name of God, the merciful and compassionate.) and concluded it by saying ‘Insha Allah, Jai Hind, Jai Bangla, khoda Hafeez, Allah hu Akbar’.

Khan was four times MLA from Murshidabad’s Noada constituency. When the wave of shifting parties from Congress, CPIM, BJP to TMC was at its peak last year, he joined TMC. This year he was chosen as the MP candidate of Murshidabad constituency in the 17th Lok Sabha election by the All India Trinamool Congress party and he won with a margin of 2,26,417 votes.

Another newly elected businessman-turned TMC-backed first-time parliamentarian, Khalilur Rahaman, from Murshidabad’s Jangipur constituency also faced the same chanting when he concluded his oath-taking by saying ‘In sha Allah’ and later added ‘Jai Hind, Jai Bangla, Khoda Hafeez when the chanting became louder.

This has raised a mixed response among the community people. Whereas, some from the left-liberal, secular front fear that their secularism is at stake, some others are praising the move.

As Mohammad Reyaz, a journalist as well as an Assistant Professor of a State-run University in West Bengal, wrote in his Face book post, “That is (Owaisi’s stand) an Indian Muslim Today, unapologetic and equally assertive, unlike old Sarkari Muslaman. Kudos Barrister Sahib.”

While this year the Parliament witnessed the extent of existing hatred towards the Muslims of the country by the right-wing representatives of the common populace, it also witnessed a new form of consciousness about the identity of the Muslim politicians that might have been erased from their conscience under the pressure of maintaining their secularism before the liberal, secular comrades.

And the impromptu attempt to rejoinder against the chanting by saying ‘Allah hu Akbar’ or ‘Khoda Hafeez’ clearly attests their stand on accentuating the fact that they too bear Indianess and Muslim-nes within themselves at the same time, just like other politicians with different religious backgrounds.

Though they are less in number against the fascist forces who tried to communalize the highest democratic place of the country, the Muslim MPs tried to uphold their identity. Their stands can be taken as new community awareness for dismantling the stereotypical notion of Sarkari Musalman. Owaisi, Khalilur or Khan may be paving the way for the 26 elected Indian Muslim representatives in the highest democracy and also to the Muslim community as to how they should represent themselves in a hostile communal environment.

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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