After so much of chaos and the flopped political stunt on Kairana, Asaduddin Owaisi asked the BJP if it would send a fact-finding committee to Muzzaffarnagar, akin to the one sent by it to Kairana on the issue of alleged migration of Hindus. He alleges that 50,000 Muslims migrated after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. Recently, the bogus list of 346 families who are alleged to have “fled” Kairana in Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh were presented by the BJP leader Hukum Singh, which suited the interests of both the BJP and the Samajwadi Party to create a “drama” for upcoming elections. Social media went gaga over the claims but went silence after finding that the BJP’s allegation was baseless. However, earlier “50,000 people had left their original places where they had lived for generations” after the Muzaffarnagar riots, and it as “mass uprooting” of minorities after country’s Independence, but no political party really bothered to look into the fate of minorities here. BJP or Samajwadi party, none of them made any efforts to find out what happened to those 50,000 people who are displaced?
Actually, BJP had ‘no other issue’ and Kairana shows their real face. Their talk of development, ‘sab ka saath, sab ka vikas’ is all a farce. Unfortunately, they are dividing people for votes by keeping their Hindutva agenda at forefront. Fortunately, this time media and laymen came forward exposing lies of the BJP. They had to drop this issue abruptly saying that the migration had no communal divide. Even the 45 Muslim families had also migrated from Kairana to nearby areas such as Panipat and Dehradun in the past one year. The claim of only ‘Hindu exodus’ made for communal reasons. Some residents of Kairana submitted a list of Muslim families who had allegedly left the town in the past one year. Migration in small western UP towns and villages has been on the rise irrespective of religion because of the agrarian crisis in the region.
If we recall, Muzzaffarnagar riots, the clashes between Hindu and Muslim communities in August–September 2013, resulted in at least 62 deaths including 52 Muslims and 10 Hindus and injured 93 and left more than 50,000 displaced. By September 17, the curfew had been lifted from all riot-affected areas and the army had also been withdrawn. The riot has been described as “the worst violence in Uttar Pradesh in recent history”, as a result, the army being deployed in the state for the first time in last 20 years. Supreme Court of India while hearing petitions in relation to the riots held the Akhilesh Yadav led Samajwadi Party, prima facie guilty of negligence in preventing the violence and ordered it to immediately arrest all those accused irrespective of their political affiliation. Court also blamed the Central government for its failure to provide intelligence inputs to the Samajwadi Party-ruled state government in time to help sound alerts.
On 21 August 2013, communal clashes were reported from Muzaffarnagar and police registered cases against 150 people and fourteen were taken into custody. Clashes between two the communities, Hindu Jats and Muslims, in Shamli and Muzaffarnagar grew on 27 August 2013. The original cause of the rioting is disputed according to bipartisan claims largely concerning the affected communities.
In this case, the cause of this rioting alternates between a traffic accident and an eve-teasing incident. According to the first version, the cause was a minor traffic accident involving some youths, which then spiraled out of control when it eventually took on religious overtones. In the second version, a girl from the Hindu Jat community was allegedly harassed in an eve-teasing incident by one Muslim youth in Kawal village. In retaliation, Hindu relatives of the girl in question, Sachin Singh and Gaurav Singh, killed the youth named Shahnawaz Qureshi. The two brothers were lynched by a Muslim mob when they tried to escape. The police arrested eleven members of the girl’s family for killing the Muslim youth. According to some locals, the police did not act against the killers of the Hindu brothers. According to the police records, Gaurav and Sachin picked a fight with Shahnawaz over a motorcycle accident. While, it has been widely reported that the fight was sparked off when Shahnawaz harassed Gaurav and Sachin’s cousin sister. The FIR of the murder makes no mention of sexual harassment or molestation.
After news of the killings spread, members of both the communities attacked one another. The police took possession of three dead bodies, and temporarily brought the situation under control. The authorities also deployed Provincial Armed Constabulary personnel to Kawal. In September 2013, fresh riots sparked off and around 11 people including a TV journalist were killed and more than 34 were injured after which indefinite curfew was clamped and the army deployed to help maintain law and order. On August 30, two days after the incident, local Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Congress leaders had hijacked a Muslim meeting demanding justice for the Kawal incident. Also, local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders allegedly gave an incendiary speech instigating the Hindu farmers on August 31. An FIR has been lodged against all the leaders. After the two meetings, the farmers were attacked and killed.
To be continued in second part…
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