I/II. http://scroll.in/article/759845/in-dadri-bjp-leaders-mahesh-sharma-and-sangeet-som-spin-a-counter-narrative
BEEF LYNCHING In Dadri, BJP leaders Mahesh Sharma and Sangeet Som keep the pot boiling The two politicians have made it clear that they will challenge the police investigation of the killing of Mohammed Akhlaq if it fails to conclude that the mob was provoked by rumours that he had slaughtered a cow. Anjali Mody · Today · 09:15 am Mahesh Sharma, the union minister for culture and the MP for Noida, has systematically muddied the waters to ensure that a police investigation into the lynching of 50-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq in Bishara village of Dadri tehsil near Delhi, will be politically contested if it does not reach the same conclusions as he and other members of his party have reached – that cow slaughter or rumors of cow slaughter provoked an unplanned attack. A responsible citizen would have said that we must await the report of the ongoing police investigation into the attack last Monday, which also left Mohammad Akhlaq’s 22-year-old son, Danish, critically injured. And Sharma is no mere citizen: he is under oath to defend the constitution. He has instead been expansive with his imaginative reconstruction of events and announced that he will “join forces with the police” in conducting the investigation. He has abrogated to himself the roles of crack investigator, forensic pathologist, social psychiatrist, political analyst, and man with a deep knowledge of animal slaughter, meat cutting and meat smuggling, to set out a narrative that looks set to become the truth, at least in some quarters, through repetition. Sharma as investigator: “A conspiracy cannot be hatched in two hours. A conspiracy requires a month, a fortnight. …There was no premeditated conspiracy. If there was one, let the police investigate.” These [the slaughter of cows] are frequent incidents. …Often trucks are seized and cows are recovered. It then causes a ruckus. A few hundred people gather, shout slogans. Someone sets the truck on fire in reaction...In the same way, someone said that it was beef [in Akhlaq’s house]. It also appeared like beef. Then they announced from the temple that ‘beef was recovered’. ‘Where was it found?’ ‘It was found in his home.’ Perhaps there was a trail of blood coming out of that home. People then reached his home. They got furious, a mob gathered, broke the door. That’s how it happened.” Sharma as forensic pathologist: “Whenever a person faces an attack by lathis, he thrusts his hands forward, and five-seven of his fingers are inevitably broken. I have 30 years’ experience as a doctor. He [a person] received at least 10-15 fractures in his body and fingers. Danish is admitted in my hospital. He does not have a single fracture in his entire body except a head injury that was caused when he was hit by a lathi. Maar diya hoga kisi shaitaan ne. But it means that the intention was not to lynch." Sharma as political analyst: “… no one threw even a stone at the neighbouring homes of Muslims. Therefore, it is wrong to give it that [a communal] colour.” Sharma as social psychologist: “Momentarily hai (It was momentary). Gaay ke maans par hum logon ka… andar se aatma hilne lagti hai (On beef… our soul starts shaking). You can kill other animals, mutton, and people don’t (react)… (but) when you name cow… We have linked the cow with our mother.” Sharma as expert on slaughter and smuggling: “They tie the four legs [of the animal] in a special knot, use some instrument, kill it. Within minutes, they skin it, pack its meat in a vehicle, and escape. Within five-seven minutes, they skin an entire adult cow. A gang of just three-four persons can do it. They take out everything [from inside the animal’s body], leaving just the skin and bones behind." Criticising the media Under attack from the media for asserting that the lynching was just an “accident” and could not be a “conspiracy”, Sharma roundly criticised the media for seeking divisions where there were none and parsing his words to find meaning that was not intended. He declared there would be justice for all “there will be justice, for them, the youth who have gone to jail and there will also be justice for them [the Akhlaqs]”. Sharma made stirring reassurances to TV cameras that Bishara would be safe for all its residents, at a meeting of the village’s Hindu groups who claimed innocents had been arrested. He appeared to support their allegations, commending them for having “given their children for investigation”, telling them he had spoken to the Home Minister Rajnath Singh and assuring them “in the investigation of the youth we will join forces with the police,……”(“in yuvaon ki jaanch me hum log poori tarah police ke saath lagenge…”). He also warned the media that they would be prevented from entering the village if they were “one-sided” in their reporting. No doubt that Sharma will claim he has been misinterpreted, but by any yardstick this sounds like a minister of the union government (who is neither a witness nor accused in the case) declaring that he believes he has a right to interfere with the functioning of the criminal justice system. Taken together with his vividly imagined reconstruction of the lynching, in which he suggests “cow slaughter” had got people’s tempers up, it would seem the minister was putting the weight of his office, and his position as MP for the area, behind a “cause and effect” narrative of the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq and his son Danish in which the mob had “just cause” for the attack, making their crimes less grave and so the arrests by the police, unfair. Not so innocent For a cabinet minister to repeat the canard about cow slaughter, when there is no complaint of cow slaughter under investigation, is irresponsible in the extreme. One must assume then that it was not done without intent. Even the temple priest who made the announcement asking people to gather because a cow had allegedly been slaughtered in the village on the night of the lynching does not say he actually saw it. Yet, it is the centrepiece of Sharma’s narrative. Akhlaq died of his injuries in Noida’s Kailash Hospital, which Sharma owns. Danish is still on life-support in that hospital. Sharma, who is himself a medical doctor, ignored issues of conflict of interest and medical ethics to claim that as a medical professional he can authoritatively say that that the injuries that Danish received suggest that his attackers had no intention to kill. Sharma, on Sunday was abroad, on work in his capacity as Union Culture minister, but more fearsome Hindutva warriors have picked up his narrative. Sangeet Som, the MLA for Sardhana, has visited Dadri to move the narrative forward. Som is accused of hate speech and inciting violence in Muzaffarnagar in 2013 including, by uploading on a social networking site, an old Pakistani video of a lynching which he claimed was a video showing the killing of two Muzaffarnagar Jat men, whose deaths were used to drum up anti-Muslim feelings that led to the orchestrated Jat-led violence against Muslims in 2013. In Dadri, Som said: 1. The police are conducting a one-sided (ek-tarafa) inquiry (this was an allegation made in Muzaffarnagar too). 2. Yes, it’s acceptable to investigate the murder, but also investigate the man who slaughtered cows. 3. A young man Rahul Yadav who was hit by a (stray police) bullet has been ignored by the media and not received compensation from the government, although the government has given the Akhlaq family Rs 20 lakhs. 4. The government of Uttar Pradesh supported the (Muslim) conspirators of Muzaffarnagar riots and they have now done the same with those who slaughtered a cow (the Akhlaqs) 5. That Hindu women in Bishara are being harassed and interfered with, and police are entering their homes illegally. 6. The media is being denied access to Bishara because its reporting is one-sided. Mohammed Akhlaq’s family may leave Bishara, with the assistance of the Indian Air Force, in which another of his sons serves. But it is clear from Mahesh Sharma’s and Sangeet Som’s statements to the media that the BJP is intent on keeping the communal cauldron in Bishara and its neighbourhood on the boil. II. http://scroll.in/article/759920/law-wont-protect-sinners-like-you-scroll-in-reporter-covering-beef-protest-detained-for-seven-hours FIRST PERSON 'Law won't protect sinners like you': Scroll.in reporter covering beef protest held for seven hours Police at Delhi's Parliament Street station refused to believe that journalist's press card was genuine, denied him the right to make phone calls to his family or a lawyer. Mayank Jain · Today · 08:55 am On Sunday at noon, as I emerged from New Delhi’s Patel Chowk Metro station, I was startled to find about a dozen police officers on high alert on the street outside. They were conducting vigorous checks of people’s bags. They weren’t looking for bombs – they were inspecting the contents of their lunchboxes. Last week, a group of students from Delhi posted a notice on Facebook announcing a demonstration outside the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters to protest against the ruling party’s refusal to condemn the lynching of a 50-year-old man in Dadri, ostensibly because he had killed a calf and stored the meat in his refrigerator. Participants were urged to to BYOB – bring your own beef – and eat it at a “Beefy Picnic” on Ashoka Road. The Delhi police, it seems, had been stationed at all the metro stations in the area to detain anyone headed to the event. As a reporter, it was just another day in the field for me. I expected to see some posters and listen to some sloganeering. The police had other plans. I was stopped right outside the metro station since the policemen refused to believe that my press card was genuine. The fact that I wasn’t carrying containers full of beef failed to convince them otherwise. After I was frisked, a burly policemen grabbed my hand and pulled me to the side. From the Delhi police website, I would later learn that he was Dinesh Kumar, the Station House Officer at the Parliament Street Police Station. After waiting for 15 minutes, another constable arrived with a smartphone. They started scrolling through photographs on the phone. From their conversation, they wanted to check if I was the one. Checking Facebook It would later become clear that they had found the Facebook invitation the organisers had created for the event, and were looking at the profile of the person who had posted the notice. After they established that I wasn’t the organiser, Kumar let me go with a warning: “Unse mat milo, kaat ke fenk dunga. (Don’t join them. I will cut you into pieces and throw them away.) As I strolled towards the BJP office, two people asked for directions to the BJP headquarters. One of them told me that his name was Gaurav Jain and it turned out that he was the organiser of the protest. He said that they had escaped security check at the metro station by hiding the beef deep inside their bags. Evidently, the police search hadn’t been as thorough as it should have been. As we were chatting, an SUV stopped in front of us. A group of policemen grabbed us and asked us to step into the car. We were being taken to the Parliament Street Police Station, one of the constables said. As protesters started phoning Gaurav Jain to ask why he had not arrived at the venue, I explained repeatedly to SHO Kumar that I was a journalist and I was only doing my job. He would have none of it. Soon enough, we found ourselves in his office at the police station where they made us write down all our details, surrounded by a scrum of constables and inspectors. There was even a senior officer from the CID who said he was investigating the case, but didn’t bother to ask or verify my credentials. The fact that my surname is Jain was enough to enrage the SHO. “Today’s kids are throwing Hinduism into a gutter,” he said. “Is this what your parents teach you? That you go out and eat beef?” My protestations were met with a command to “shut up” and threats of slaps and "dhaaras” (sections of the law). After my repeated insistence that I was a journalist, he asked me to prove it. I gave him my press card as well as the visiting card, both of which clearly mention my designation as a reporter at Scroll.in. “It’s all fake media,” Kumar said. He tore up my visiting card and threw the pieces at me. “I can get this made at home.” Denied water, washroom I was ushered out of the room by two policemen and kept in a sub-inspector’s office, along with Gaurav Jain and the woman who accompanied him. I was not allowed to phone my family or a lawyer. “The law can protect criminals but it won’t protect sinners like you,” a constable declared. I pleaded to be allowed to drink some water and use the washroom. It was half an hour before I was allowed to. I wasn’t allowed to eat, or use my phone. We had to get up from our seats or sit down when we were ordered to. Around 4 pm, I was called into the SHO’s office, where he sat with a police inspector who was struggling to turn on the computer. He was using Google to search for the term “Beefy party”. The idea was to find everyone who interacted with the page and use it as evidence. Since they couldn’t find anything about me, they asked me to help them look up Gaurav Jain’s profile. I refused. This angered the SHO and he asked me to “get out” right away. Finally, at 8 pm, the SHO called me to tell me that I would be let go after writing an apology. “What do I apologise for?” I asked. He replied, “Just do what we say and don’t open your mouth.” The sub-inspector gave us another lecture on how we were a “disgrace” to the country and how the government wasted its personnel and time to keep protests in check. No formal complaint Almost seven hours after being detained, there had been no written complaint, no First Information Report, no paperwork of any sort that could prove that we had actually been detained. When we asked why we had been taken in, we were told that we had "offended the feelings of a lot of people” for which we would be “punished”. After another 30 minutes of waiting, they finally let me go without forcing me to make an apology. But my press card was missing. I asked the SHO to return it to me. “I crushed it and tore into pieces,” he said with a laugh. He finally ordered one of the constables to fetch it. He bent the hard plastic back and forth before giving it back to me. I was asked to “leave and run as soon as possible”. I got away with a damaged press card and a first-hand experience of strategies employed by the state to silence opinions it finds inconvenient. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
