Hindu mob razes Islamic school in Assam as its official is charged with terrorism
Yet another madrasa (Muslim-run primary school) was bulldozed in Assam state as the government uses the excuse of “terrorist links” to demolish Muslim-owned properties. This is the fourth madrasa to be demolished in a month in the state since the start of August.
Shockingly, this madrasa was bulldozed by Hindu extremist locals rather than government officials in “protest” of alleged “jihadi activities.” The extremists also bulldozed a home next to the madrasa.
This bulldozer vigilantism has gone unpunished by the government, which has encouraged anti-Muslim sentiments by targeting madrasas across the state.
BJP Leader Files Police Complaint Against Muslim Fact-Checker Mohammad Zubair
Judicial harassment is once again being weaponized against Muslim fact-checker and Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair. A leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Manjinder Singh Sirsa, filed a false police criminal complaint against Zubair alleging that he had worked with “anti-national” elements and offended the Sikh community through his fact-checking.
After India’s cricket team lost a match to Pakistan’s cricket team, Zubair had shared anti-Sikh tweets posted by Hindu extremists who falsely claimed that Indian cricketer Arshdeep Singh, who is a Sikh, had purposefully thrown India’s match against Pakistan because he was a Sikh nationalist, which he is not.
Zubair had posted the tweets to show that the vicious trolling being directed towards Singh was driven by real Hindu extremists and not Pakistani bots.
Sirsa, however, has attempted to use the incident to fuel more harassment against Zubair, claiming that most of those vile tweets were from “Pakistani accounts” and that Zubair was acting at the behest of “anti-national elements.”
“Mohammed Zubair acting in connivance with anti-national elements across the border has cleverly taken screenshots from Twitter of various Twitter handles… trying to portray that such abusive and malicious tweets were posted by Indian Twitter handles, whereas the reality is that most of these Twitter accounts are Pakistani accounts,” Sirsa claimed in a police report.
In July, Zubair was recently granted bail after a cycle of judicial harassment, during which Hindu extremist leaders repeatedly filed police complaints against Zubair to target him for his fact-checking.
Activist Teesta Setalvad Slams Law Enforcement, Calls For Honesty And Impartiality
Following her release from prison under blatantly false charges, renowned human rights defender Teesta Setalvad has slammed Indian law enforcement for failing to apply laws with “honesty, impartiality and autonomy.”
“We have a set of laws in this country… and those laws need to be applied with some degree of honesty and with some degree of impartiality and autonomy by the police,” Setalvad told Indian news channel NDTV two days after her release on interim bail from in a false case of fabricating evidence to “frame” the perpetrators of violence in the 2002 Gujarat pogroms.
Setalvad called the surge in arrests of human rights defenders and journalists a “crackdown,” and said that the police should not become “an arm of the executive.”
“I think it is quite worrying actually because if you have a situation when the police become used to and get away with this kind without due process of arrest, then it can be a threat to anybody tomorrow… It might start with an activist and could be anybody,” Setalvad said.
Setalvad was arrested in June after the Supreme Court virtually accused her – without evidence – of forging documents to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s complicity in a pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat state in 2002.
UP claims incarcerated journalist Siddique Kappan Has ‘Deep Nexus’ With Terror Group
In an attempt to justify the unjust and indefinite imprisonment of Muslim journalist Siddique Kappan, the government of Uttar Pradesh state falsely claimed in a written statement to a court that Kappan had “close links” and a “deep nexus” with the Popular Front of India (PFI), an Indian Muslim organization, calling it a terrorist group.
“The investigation has revealed that the petitioner (Kappan) is part of the larger conspiracy… to foment religious discord and spread terror in the country, especially in the wake of anti-CAA protests and violence, the Babri Masjid decision… and the Hathras [rape] incident,” the government claimed.
This blatantly false allegation is openly disputed by international human rights bodies, including the United Nations, which have expressed concern over Kappan’s ongoing detention. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has listed Kappan on its Freedom of Religion or Belief Victims List, along with over 30 other Indian victims of detention based on religious identity.
Kappan was arrested in October 2020 while travelling to the Hathras region of Uttar Pradesh to cover the rape and murder of a teenage Dalit girl by upper-caste Hindu men. Due to his Muslim identity, Kappan was charged under India’s draconian anti-terror laws and has remained in jail despite global outrage. Despite petitioning for his freedom, he has been repeatedly denied bail.
The PFI, a lawfully constituted organization in India, has long been accused by India’s criminal justice system of extremist activities. Authorities have not banned it though, so it is unclear how the prosecution will prove that Kappan’s connections with the PFI are against the law.
