Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 24: Even though a First Information Report (FIR) has been filed against the “hate speeches” delivered at the “Dharma Sansad” in Haridwar, the Uttarakhand police has refused to invoke the stringent provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) and registered a case only for promoting enmity between two groups of people.
A day after the Uttarakhand police registered the FIR, the State Director General of Police (DGP) Ashok Kumar said the hate videos had been pulled down from Facebook. The FIR was based on a complaint filed by a local resident and has named only one person, a convert Wasim Rizvi alias Jitendra Narayan Tyagi as an accused.
The complainant only mentioned “Wasim Rizvi and others”, he stated. The “Dharma Sansad” was held at Haridwar from December 17 to 19. Rizvi, a former chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board, had recently converted to Hinduism at a ceremony endorsed by Yati Narsinghanand, who was also the main organizer of the Dharma Sansad.
Though many critics claimed that the police was going soft on the participants of the “Dharma Sansad” because of the BJP government in the state, Kumar said the police registered the case under Section 153A of the IPC (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion), entailing a maximum punishment of five years, because the hate speeches did not lead to any violence.
Refuting that the police was deliberately registering the case under “milder sections.” Kumar said the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) was not invoked as the act did not lead to any killings. “We have invoked both Section (i) and (ii) of Section 153 A IPC in the FIR. We have to go by law, cannot invoke UAPA as the event did not lead to any violence or killing. The investigation will reveal further details,” he stated.
On being asked about children brandishing swords and tridents at the event, he remarked, “they are traditional things. They did not procure any weapon nor any weapon factory was found….it is all part of investigation.” At the event, Yati Narsinghanand had called on Hindu youths to become “Prabhakaran” and “Bhindranwale” and provoked Hindus to pick up arms against Muslims.
Kumar said the police would call Narsinghanand and others seen in the video for questioning as per law. No arrests have been made so far. Narsinghanand faces several FIRs in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Earlier this year, his comments about Prophet Muhammad at a press conference in Delhi led the police to file an FIR. Kumar said the State police have also registered a case against Rizvi for objectionable content in a book he wrote on Prophet Mohammad.
Rizvi, the only accused in the FIR, released a video statement on Friday saying the case against him was a sign of “frustration of the militant/orthodox elements within the Muslim community.” Dressed in saffron robes with a tilak on his forehead, Rizvi said: “They realise that their fraud has been exposed. It’s not a hate speech to speak the truth. Hindus are coming together, which is why the parties doing politics over Muslim votes are disturbed. To defeat the BJP, they are trying to again divide the Hindus, because they know that if they don’t succeed, they will cease to exist.”
Meanwhile, the prominent Muslim leader and AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi said his party would file an FIR over the hate speeches made at the Haridwar conclave and claimed that a video of his being circulated showing him making threatening remarks, was an edited version to distort his image.
Owaisi said on Friday that the video shared among others by the BJP leader Shehzad Poonawalla, had taken just 1 minute of a 45-minute speech given by him to convey the wrong impression that he was trying to spread violence and said it was meant to distract from the Haridwar meeting.
Tweeting two videos of his speech, made in Kanpur on December 12, he said, “I did not incite violence or give threats… As you can see… I was talking about police atrocities in Kanpur and addressing such cops who think they have immunity to violate people’s liberties because of Modi-Yogi… I said do not confuse our silence for acquiescence.”
On those drawing a connection between what he said and the speeches made at the Haridwar ‘Dharam Sansad’, over which a case of promoting enmity has been filed, Owaisi said at the Haridwar meeting, “majoritan organisations have called for #genocide”. “The conversation cannot shift from the fact that people are openly calling for violence while the govt of the day is complicit.”
