SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
New Delhi: In August and September, at least 70 Muslims were shot and injured in ‘half-encounters’ in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, according to a bulletin from the South Asia Justice Campaign (SAJC).
These numbers are part of the first edition of the Election Watch-UP, 2027 report published recently. SAJC calls itself a “non-partisan movement calling for the protection of human rights, democracy and diversity in India and the wider South Asia region”.
According to the SAJC, “It is an established pattern now that elections in Uttar Pradesh in recent years – parliamentary, state, or local – become moments of heightened anti-minority rhetoric and violence.”
The report is thus an attempt to record facts as well as to “act as an evidentiary basis for early warning”, it said.
Muslims detained
In these two months, 152 Muslims were arrested or detained. This number includes seven women held over meat and men jailed for criticising Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath online. Interestingly, the report points out that the CM himself has made 10 of the 21 documented hate speeches in the state during the same period.
The CM has called his political opponents ‘Babur’s followers’, after the first Mughal emperor. His deputy, Keshav Prasad Maurya, said that anyone educated in a madrasa develops a mindset ‘like that of a terrorist’. There is no record of any of the speakers facing any action.
However, a court permitted the government to withdraw a case against 25 members of Hindutva organisations, including leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who were accused of making speeches ahead of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots in Uttar Pradesh. More than 60 people were killed in the violence, most of them Muslims.
Hate crimes
Four Muslims were killed in suspected hate crimes. The victims include a 20-year-old beaten to death after men objected to his cousin’s burqa and a schoolteacher shot by a man citing ‘love jihad’. he four killings bring the state’s toll for 2026 to nine to date, against seven in all of 2025.
At least 16 more were assaulted, including a 12-year-old boy attacked after refusing to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. In these cases of assault on Muslims, no attacker was arrested in 14, and in two, police acted against the victims instead. T
Property razed
At least 34 Muslim homes, businesses, and religious structures were demolished in nine incidents, said the report. It cited the Saharanpur mosque and how those who criticised or reported the demolition were prosecuted.
“In Kaushambi, eight buildings belonging to one family were razed within five days of a fatal factory blast—’ on the Chief Minister’s orders’, the district’s senior civil official said.”
In a separate move, the state withdrew the Madrasa Board’s authority to grant degrees, a decision that left nearly 37,000 students enrolled in Islamic schools facing uncertainty.
Action against opposition
At least on 12 occasions, Opposition politicians were put under house arrest in 10 districts of the state. This was essentially to prevent them from visiting the families of people who had died allegedly in police custody, or reaching a mosque as it was demolished, or being present during the Chief Minister’s visits. The state president of Congress was detained three times in September.
SOURCE : SIASAT
