IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, Feb 5: Activists, journalists and civil society members have released a fact-finding report on Kasganj violence at Press Club of India on Monday. They have said that communal harmony is still alive in Kasganj but the local administration and the state government are having bias approach towards Muslims.
While addressing the press conference academician and activist Banojyotsna Lahiri, who was part of the fact-finding team, raised a number of doubts over police investigations and narrated that how the local administration is selectively targeting the Muslim community.
She said that those arrested from the Muslim community are charged for firing and stone platting but those arrested from Hindu community are charged with very low charges. She also said that Naushad injured by gunshot but still no FIR has been registered in this regard. She said that two mosques were burnt but no separate FIR has been registered.
Muhammad Salim Engineer, general secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind said that it was targeted attack, not communal riots.
“I don’t call it as communal riots. For many years there is a specific pattern of violence which is planned and targeted,” while addressing the press, Engineer said.
“This is an attack not only on few persons, a community or area but it is an attack on the very idea of India, its root, brotherhood and secularism,” he explained.
He said that this is an attempt to frighten the whole country and it is a challenge for us to work together and end this environment of fear.
Senior journalist Urmilesh Singh termed the nature of violence as one of the major threats to democracy. He said that earlier political parties used to take a stand on such conflicts and riots and stand with victims but now they are silent because they are afraid. They think that their efforts can be branded as minority appeasement.
He said that a naked bias is spreading very fast in the whole system of our country and even the media is not spread out of it.
Social activist Nadeem Khan, Rakhi Sehgal, journalist Arfa Khanum and Amit Sengupta also addressed the gathering.
Retired IG of UP Police SR Darapuri, Adv. Asad Hayat, journalists Amit Sengupta, Hasanul Banna, Aleemullah khan, social activists Rakhi Sehgal, Mohit Pandey, Nadeem Khan, Khalid Saifi and Shariq Hussain were part of the fact-finding team.
The report was prepared by civil rights group #UnitedAgainstHate.
