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UP: Under Yogi Raj, the Hindutva Hooliganism Continues 

If not controlled, this could create a major law and order headache for Yogi government, that has already replaced normal policing with encounter of alleged criminals.
Uttar Pradesh

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Yogi Adityanath's rule in Uttar Pradesh started with major hooliganism and breaking of law and order by the BJP, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, RSS workers and Hindu Yuva Vahini leaders in April last year. After the BJP Member of Parliament from Saharanpur Raghav Lakhanpal was not allowed to take out an illegal march by Luve Kumar, the SSP of Saharanpur, in a communally sensitive area of the city in mid-April,2017,  Lakhanpal allegedly instigated a rioting mob to attack the SSP's house.

A week later, workers of RSS, VHP and BJP attacked and burnt a police station in Agra and tried to release five RSS worker from lock up, who were arrested for attacking Muslim grocery shop owners. To deal with the media pressure BJP, RSS workers were booked in the two cases, but no action was taken against the culprits. 

And the series of hooliganism continues unabated, with the tacit support of the ruling dispensation. The hooliganism by the saffron outfits, including the Hindu Yuva Vahini, an outfit established by chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the BJP, has substantially gone up in last ten months, since Yogi has become the CM. In last one month alone there have been twelve incidents of the HYV, BJP and VHP leaders taking law and order into their hands.

As the trend suggests, it seems like the police has been working subservient to the agenda of saffron groups. The law and order agencies also do not take any action against the members of the saffron outfit, even if they violate the law.

Just four days ago a group of BJP workers who were allegedly associated with BJP leader Nanak Chand Agrawal, the brother of BJP national general secretary Anil Jain, assaulted a police officer who was trying to save men from the minority community from being beaten up by the party workers in Firozabad town of UP.

“These people attacked the two men just because they were wearing skull caps. The politically well-connected goons abused the two men, who were on their way to buy medicines, and told them to leave the country. The assailants did not even spare the SHO," the Firozabad Superintendent of Police Rajesh Singh told Newsclick.

In a statement, which in a way shows the hooliganism of the men from ruling party, Singh added, “If these men can assault a police officer in public, imagine what they can do with the public.”

Even worse, after the culprits were booked and arrested by the police, Jain’s elder brother Nanak Chand Agrawal visited the police officers and pleaded with them to withdraw the case.

“I have come here to request you to pardon my men in this case,” Agrawal told the city SP Rajesh Singh and deputy SP Arun Kumar Singh. As the meeting was video recorded by the UP police, when DSP Arun asked Agrawal why he wanted the accused pardoned, the BJP leader said he had “some obligations”. It was quite courageous on part of the SP Rajesh Singh to give a blunt reply to the senior BJP leader. “We won’t spare your men. They attacked policemen. This could have triggered a Kasganj-like clash,” the SP replied.

Similarly, last week the Bijnor unit of the Hindu Yuva Vahini approached police alleging that a couple from Kashmir was “seeking financial assistance while criticising Army action in the Valley”.

Shockingly, the police did no prior probe and merely on the basis of the bias and prejudiced approach that the saffron groups have about people from Kashmir, arrested 27-years-old Ghulam Nabi and his wife Kausar, residents of Baramulla in Kashmir, under section 151 (arrest to prevent the commission of cognizable offences) of Criminal Procedural Code (CrPC).

Nabi later told Newsclick that he was arrested and kept in jail despite committing no crime. “It is true that we were seeking financial help from people but we did not criticise army and neither did we say anything against India. I wonder why were we arrested,” he said.

When contacted, the Station House Officer of Kiratpur in Bijnor, Mukesh Kumar Singh, said the police arrested the couple but nothing illegal about them was found. “The couple had valid identification proofs. They were later given bail from the SDM court. We got a phone call from some people about some suspicious activities but it turned out to be false,” he said. While the police shied away from naming the group established by Yogi Adityanath behind the incident, the HYV flaunted the act as their own.

Similarly, on February 10, the western Uttar Pradesh convener of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, Nagendra Pratap Tomar had registered a complaint against a 22-years-old woman from Meerut, a local model alleging that she had converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim man and was alluring other young Hindu girls, who were aspiring to be models, into conversion to Islam by promising them good modelling assignments.

The Crime Branch found that not only was Tomar's allegation about “love Jihad” against the model false, but it completely based on a story a fifty-year-old “spurned lover” of hers. He had made it up just so that the saffron outfits would harass her, as she had refused to fulfil his demands. The model was also unmarried, found the Crime Branch during its investigation, highlighting how the outfit established by Yogi Adtyanath, was being used by people to abuse law and order and harass innocent citizens. Subsequently the woman met the city Senior Superintendent of Police Manzil Saini and complained about how her “spurned lover” was misusing the saffron outfit to frame her in a legal case. Ms. Saini assured her that she would “personally monitor the case”. 

Later, when Newsclick asked Tomar if he should have not jumped the gun and registered a complaint which turned out to be false, he washed his hands off by saying that he was “merely helping”.

It is important to mention here that it was Tomar who had made an inflammatory speech against Muslims last month in which he had asked Hindu youths to “bring 10 Muslim girls for every Hindu girl marrying a Muslims.”

On January 31, a group of HYV workers in Meerut thrashed Zahid Khan, a Muslim youth, for having a relationship with a Hindu girl while alleging that he was harassing the girl. The HYV workers also assaulted a journalist who was reporting on their hooliganism and snatched his phone. During the police probe it turned out that there was no factual basis to the “harassment” story as claimed by the  HYV workers. This too wa made up simply to justify thrashing Zahid in full public view.

Zahid's elder brother Sarik Khan told the media, “Zahid and the girl are friends but they had some issues which the HYV workers tried to portray as harassment.”

Meerut Superintendent of Police Maan Singh Chauhan told Newsclick that the action of the HYV activists was against the law as they had no right to take law into their own hands. He said that police will take action if the aggrieved party registers a complaint. But no one from Zahid's family expressed the courage to registers complaint fearing retaliation from the saffron workers.

And these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a long list of minor incidents of the Right wing hooliganism being reported from almsot every UP town and city in which the police action falls short of being standard. And even if the police acts, due to visible pressure from the ruling party, no action is taken against the goons, since they belong to the saffron ideological hue. If not controlled in time this could create a major law and order headache for Yogi government, that has already replaced normal policing with encounter of alleged criminals.

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