Syed Ali Ahmed | India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, APRIL 15—The Delhi Police seems to have become tough against the hate crime as it immediately arrested the culprits in at least three incidents of attacks on Muslims that took place in different parts of the city following the media giving a communal colour to COVID-19 after Tablighi Jamaat congregation at their Nizamuddin Markaz a fortnight ago.
Police took a swift action in identifying and arresting an accused involved in beating up of a Muslim vegetable vendor in Badarpur area on April 10.
As the incident was video-recorded by some people and it was circulated on social media, Cyber Cell of Delhi police sent a message on Twitter to DCP(Southeast) R P Meena along with the vide for action in the matter.
Meena immediately asked the Badarpur police station officials to investigate it as the incident had taken place in its jurisdiction. Meena forwarded the video to the Badarpur police inspector.
The video contained the picture of a motorcycle parked near the place where the vegetable vendor was being beaten up. As the number plate of the motorcycle was visible, police tracked its owner and it happened to be one Sudhanshu who had just a few days ago signed as a COVID-19 volunteer with the police.
Sudhanshu told police that he could not intervene due to the fear because the accused, who was beating the vendor, was wielding a stick and was very angry.
But this resulted in police reaching to the accused as also the victim. Police finally arrested the accused, identified as Praveen Babbar, a resident of Badarpur Extension, on April 12. Babbar runs a tour and travel company.
Victim Mohammed Salim (21) told the police that he was selling vegetables from his handcart when Babbar all of a sudden came to him with a stick, asked his identity and began hitting him with the stick saying, “Tum logon ne jihad macha diya hai” and asked him to leave. One of Babbar’s accomplices made a video of the incident and it was circulated on the social media.
In another incident, the Delhi police on April 14 registered an FIR against the owner of a grocery store owner in South Delhi’s Gautam Nagar, one of the most posh areas of Delhi. The police also arrested two persons in this connection.
The provocation for the FIR was the insulting of a young girl and her mother on the basis of their religion.
The FIR has been registered under Sections 341 pertaining to punishment for wrongful restraint and 298 relating to uttering words etc with deliberate intent to hurt the religious feelings of any person.
According to police, the young in Muslim attire went to the grocery shop to buy something while her mother was sitting in the driver’s seat of their car. But the grocery store owner shouted at and insulted the girl by mentioning her religion. The store owner misbehaved when her mother also came and asked the store owner to behave. The girl’s brother is a pilot in air India and the family lives in Hauz Khas itself.
Similarly, the police also arrested three persons in connection with attack on a 22-year-old youth Mehboob Ali, a resident of Harewali village in Bawana. Ali was beaten up badly on the rumours that he was conspiring to spread novel coronavirus in his village as he returned from a Tablighi Jamaat programme in Bhopal where he spent several months in training. Ali is currently under treatment in LNJP Hospital and kept in corona isolation ward on being a COVID-19 suspect as he was affiliated to Tablighi Jamaat.
Police also registered an FIR in connection with an assault on one Maulana Mohammed Ayyub, Imam of Abu Bakra Masjid in JJ Colony, Bawana on April. However, no one has been arrested so far as the Imam could not provide identity or any other detail about the accused. The accused persons had held the Maulana by his beard and asked him to chant “Jai Shri Ram” and assaulted him when he refused to comply.
There were several other incidents of assaults on Muslims in different parts of Delhi post-Tablighi Markaz congregation and media propagating that Tablighis were behind the spread of COVID-19 in the country.
The Delhi Minorities Commission had approached the police to register FIRs in these cases and arrest the accused.
