Varanasi: Muslim community attacked, residents decry police’s communal attitude

Konia civil society members met with Varanasi Deputy Commissioner of Police on May 27, 2021 to demand a fair and thorough investigation into a brutal physical assault incident in Barwa area of the district.

A delegation consisting of local leaders like Manish Sharma, Anup Shramik, Maulana Badruddin Ansar, Zubair Khan, Arshalan Ali, etc. condemned the police for allegedly supporting a group of goons who attacked people from a nearby Muslim locality. Three people were hospitalised following the incident.

“This group has been carrying out illegal activities such as liquor trade in this area for the last seven years or so. These 12-15 youths are under the patronage of police and have brutally attacked nearby residents. More deplorable is that the miscreants are pressuring the victims to withdraw complaints and the police are encouraging the victims to settle for a compromise,” Sharma told SabrangIndia.

Moreover, he said that victims were not questioned or provided a medical examination by the police. For this reason, the delegation approached the police officer to demand an impartial investigation into the attack. Sharma alleged that instead of applying IPC Section 307 against the assaulters, the local police are protecting them.

“Victims are threatening to kill again if they do not compromise. We will not allow Varanasi to become a place of communal tension in any way. If the district administration does not immediately curb such acts, the civil society members will move towards a larger movement,” said Sharma.

Community members alleged that similar trends have been observed across Varanasi. According to complainants, this is the sixth residential area, where instead of explaining every small quarrel the police attempted to give the incident a colour of communal tension.

Earlier, residents of the Bhojubeer region complained of local police terming a scuffle between children as a communal incident that later aggravated to stone-pelting between two communities.