After 3-year delay, Supreme Court will hear challenges to anti-Muslim citizenship law
After an inexcusable delay of nearly three years, the Supreme Court has finally announced it will begin hearing on Monday, September 12, the over 200 petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the anti-Muslim Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) that India’s Parliament enacted in December 2019.
The cases will come up before the Chief Justice of India U. U. Lalit and Justice S Ravindra Bhat.
The discriminatory Islamophobic law CAA fast-tracks citizenship for various religious minorities from India’s neighboring countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, but tellingly excludes Muslims from the list.
Shortly after it was enacted, massive protests broke out across India, led by Muslims. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, as well as Uttar Pradesh government of Hindu extremist Yogi Adityanath, responded with a brutal police assault, joined by Hindu extremist mobs. On one single day, 20 Muslims were killed in police action.
The CAA has been widely criticized globally, including by US lawmakers. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has called the CAA “religiously discriminatory.”
Hindu mob shoots and kills Muslim laborer in Uttar Pradesh; two arrested
A Hindu mob reportedly shot and killed a 19-year-old Muslim man, Shahrukh, in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district. He was killed while returning from work, his family said.
“There were some people already standing on the way, carrying weapons. They stopped Shahrukh and friends and started abusing them. There were two men who opened fire,” Shahrukh’s cousin narrates.
The mob called Shahrukh a “thief” before shooting him. His family denied that he was a thief, and called his death targeted killing.
The police have arrested two Hindu men named Dharamveer and Ompal.
Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, has recorded the highest number of hate crimes against Muslims since its Hindu supremacist chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, came to power in 2017. The state-sponsored Islamophobia has escalated since Adityanath won reelection earlier this year.
In hate speech, Hindu TV journalist says Muslim women should marry Hindus and convert
The Editor-in-Chief of a Hindu extremist television news network, Suresh Chavhanke, has in a controversial statement said Muslim women should marry Hindu men and convert out of Islam and to Hinduism.
Known for making inflammatory remarks against Muslims and repeatedly issuing threats of violence against the minority community, Chavhanke’s latest statement, given on video, has gone viral.
“I promise on camera that if you marry Hindus and become Hindu then you will not have to face divorce. You will not have to become a child-production factory. You will not be the second wife of someone,” Chavahanke said in the statement.
Last year, Chavhanke had administered a genocidal oath to a Hindu group in India’s capital, New Delhi, that said, “We take an oath and make a resolution that till our last breath, we shall fight, die for and if need be, kill, to make this country a Hindu Rashtra.”
Chavhanke and his TV network have a history of inciting violence against Muslims and spewing misinformation about Islam. Last year, the Supreme Court restrained his network, Sudarshan TV, from airing some shows as they were “insidious.”
Two Hindu men arrested in Uttar Pradesh for abusing, assaulting Muslim men
In yet another hate crime in Uttar Pradesh, two Hindu men assaulted two Muslim men and abused them with communal slurs like “Pakistani” and “Mulle” while forcing them to chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’’ (Victory to Mother India) and ‘Jai Shri Ram’ (Victory to Lord Ram).
One victim is an Imam at a mosque.
The attack occurred in Ghaziabad district, which adjoins New Delhi. In the video of the incident that has gone viral on social media one of the accused can be seen thrashing a bearded man, while constantly abusing him in the middle of the road even as passersby urge the attacker to spare the Muslim man.
The police have arrested both assaulters, Sachin Nehra and Sonu Nehra.
