SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
New Delhi: In Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal, the police have booked a Muslim student, a faculty member and another youth on a Bajrang Dal member’s complaint.
According to The Wire, the complainant alleged that he was assaulted for objecting to ‘obscene dancing’ at a garba event at SAM College on October 16.
The complaint said that three Bajrang Dal members went to the college event after learning that despite their outfit’s message against it, the college had allowed Muslim students to attend it.
This is in sharp contrast to what students present at the event shared. They said that Bajrang Dal members stormed onto the campus and asked people with a “jihadi mentality” to leave and assaulted two Muslim students, even as they raised the ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan.
The next day, an FIR was registered at the Bilkhiriya police station, invoking five sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including obscene songs in a public place and criminal intimidation by threat of death.
Another complaint but no FIR
The report said that one of the assaulted students, Sameer Alam, also filed a complaint at the same police station. He reportedly named the Bajrang Dal member and five others for beating him but no FIR has been registered.
Meanwhile, the Hindutva outfit’s FIR was filed by Pushpraj Yadav of Patel Nagar Colony, who calls himself the vidyarthi pramukh (student head) of the Bajrang Dal’s district unit.
According to the FIR, Yadav learnt about people dancing ‘obscenely’ at the college event. He said he went there with Shivam Kushwaha and Yash Dwivedi, co-convenor of the Bajrang Dal’s district unit. There, they found that ‘more than two people of the Muslim community were dancing obscenely to film songs’.
He alleged that when they called for the cheap songs to be stopped, two boys assaulted them and even threatened to kill them. He said faculty member Neeraj Gupta also threatened to have them thrown out. While he named Sameer Alam, he said he did not know the name of the other boy.
In Alam’s complaint filed online on October 18, however, he named six men, including Yadav and Dwivedi, one of his companions. He said the event began at 6 pm, and ‘outsiders’ arrived around 8.10 pm, calling for all non-Hindus to leave.
While he was on his way out, he was allegedly stopped and asked his name. On being told, the outsiders allegedly grabbed him by the neck, 15-20 people beat him up, calling him ‘jihadi’ and other abuses.
In his complaint, he also named Bablu Gurjar, Yash (Yashashvi) Dwivedi, Prashant Singh Patel, Harsh Lakheriya, and Mohit Deshmukh. He said some people from the college got him out.
As to why he filed his complaint two days later, he had been given death threats, so he was scared.
First-hand account
Speaking to The Wire, Alam, a final-year law student from Uttar Pradesh, said that he and Masoom Raza, a first-year B. Tech student, were beaten after being made to identify themselves. “I was supposed to leave for home. But missing events in the college is penalised, and I would have been fined… college fees are already enough to put a strain, and I didn’t want to pay fines, so that is why I stayed and attended the event.”
He said that in the melee, he lost a wallet with around Rs 7,600 in cash. He added that after a faculty member intervened, the two scaled a boundary wall and escaped to their friend’s accommodation about ten kilometres away.
A video showing Bajrang Dal workers slapping Alam at the venue has circulated on social media.
Police version
The Bilkhiriya police station said no FIR could be registered on Alam’s complaint because he had not come to the station. However, Alam claimed that he had been assured by the university that an FIR would be lodged.
The police also said they hadn’t seen the said video of Bajrang Dal workers assaulting Muslim students at the venue. He also claimed that the police didn’t act on Yadav’s FIR either.
Conflicting reports
Hindutva outfits have described the Muslim youths as outsiders though The Wire has confirmed that Alam is a bona fide student of the university.
Navbharat Live quoted Jitendra Chauhan, Madhya Bharat prant mantri (a state-level office bearer) of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), whose youth wing is the Bajrang Dal, that the college let in outsiders.
Haribhoomi also reported on October 17 that Bajrang Dal workers had caught two Muslim youths at the garba event and handed them to the police.
SOURCE : SIASAT
