- Sunday, February 23, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Shubham Ghosh
THE CLAIM that an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad was recently attacked by Hindu men in Ghaziabad in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh attacks has come under the scanner. The local police have booked a worker of the Samajwadi Party (SP) accusing him of fuelling communal disharmony. The political activist, identified as Ummaid Pehelwan Idrisi, has been accused of circulating on social media a misleading video of the elderly man allegedly facing attack from some youngsters on religious grounds. The FIR lodged against him also mentioned that social media platform Facebook allowed the “misleading” clip circulate without caring to verify it.
Idrisi, who identifies himself as a SP worker on his Facebook account and has pictures of him with party president Akhilesh Yadav there, was a member of Ghaziabad Development Authority when the SP was in power, a source in the party confirmed. The case against him was lodged at the Loni Border Police Station in Ghaziabad on Wednesday (16) evening, a day after the local police booked Twitter, a news website, some journalists and politicians of the Opposition Congress in a separate FIR over the video’s circulation.
‘Act presented a threat to law and order’
The FIR against Idrisi, which was filed on the complaint of a local policeman, said he had “unnecessarily” made the video of Abdul Shamad Saifi, 72, to “create social disharmony” and shared it on his Facebook account. “He shared on his social media account the video which had religious context to it without verifying the truth of the matter. It gave the incident a communal colour and was an attempt at disrupting social harmony,” the FIR said, adding: “The particular act presented a threat to law and order and tried to divide between Hindu and Muslim community”.
The FIR against Idrisi, who had helped Saifi file his FIR, has been lodged under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 153A (promoting enmity), 295A (act intended to outrage religious feelings), 504 (intentional insult), 505 (mischief) and 120B (conspiracy) besides Section 67 of the IT Act, which penalises for transmitting obscene material.
Another complaint was also filed by one Amit Acharya in relation to the case at Delhi’s Tilak Marg Police Station and it named among others, actor Swara Bhaskar and Twitter India MD Mahnish Maheshwari. The complaint said the accused individuals have several thousands of followers on social media and despite knowing that their tweets make an impact on the society, they gave communal colours to the incident without going through the facts,
What is the case all about?
The outrage started a day after Saifi was seen being thrashed in a video with a young man chopping his beard off. Soon after, social media platforms were abuzz that yet another minority community member in India was being tortured in Narendra Modi’s India. But soon, the Ghaziabad Police said that the incident had nothing communal but “personal enmity”. It said some people attacked the elderly man because they were angry with him since the ‘taweez’ (amulet) he gave to one of the accused promising it would bring good fortune did not work out well and the family saw a mishap, on the contrary.
In another video that also got shared widely, the elderly man from Bulandshahr was seen complaining that he was also forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram”. The police said nothing of that sort happened and Saifi’s formal complaint which was filed on June 7 did not mention about it.
ThePrint news website said after going through a copy of the FIR to confirm that it doesn’t mention the charge that Saifi was told to chant “Jai Shri Ram”.
Three persons were arrested under sections 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the IPC.
Kallu Gujjar and Adil were arrested on Monday (14) while prime accused Pravesh Gujjar had already been in custody pertaining to an extortion case. The police said there were seven to eight boys who thrashed Saifi and many of them were Muslims.
Meanwhile, the National Commission for Minorities has sought a report from Ghaziabad police within a week.
