Syed Khalique Ahmed | India Tmorrow
NEW DELHI, MAY 6—A 40-member team of Delhi Police Special Cell descended on the house of Delhi Minorities commission (DMC) chairman Dr. Zafarul Islam Khan just half an hour before the ‘iftar’ timings today.
His family members told India Tomorrow that the sleuths had allegedly come to detain Dr. Khan. His family members said they asked Dr. Khan to accompany them as he was wanted for questioning in a case of sedition registered against him. However, they gave up the idea of picking him up as local people in large numbers gathered in support of Dr. Khan.
One of his family members said that the cops talked to Dr. Khan for about one and a half hour on different issues. “They have called Dr. Khan for questioning at their office on Monday”, said one of the family members. He said that the police did not given any written order. They called him only verbally.
President, Jamate Islami Hind Syed Sadatullah Hussaini & Vice President Er. Mohammad Saleem at Dr. Zafrul Islam’s Resident
A neighbour who lives in D Block of Abul Fazal Enclave, Jamia Nagar, adjoining the residence of Dr. Khan said that Dr. Khan lived there for the last 35 years and he was always very cooperative to everybody. “The fact that 40 members of the police descended on the house of Dr. Khan indicates that the police want to terrorise Dr. Khan and his family members and all those who stand in the way of the BJP’s agenda of suppressing Muslims by arresting each and every one who led anti-CAA movement and implicating them in the northeast Delhi riots in February this year”, said his neighbour.
A case under Section 124A and 153B pertaining to sedition and promoting hostility between communities was registered on the complaint of a resident of Vasant Kunj society after a tweet in which Dr. Khan allegedly expressed thanks to Kuwait for raising the issue of Islamophobia by bigots in India. Dr. Khan had said in his tweet that this reaction from Kuwait and the local population in other Arab countries was without any complaint from Indian Muslims. In his tweet, he said that there would be an avalanche if the Indian Muslims complained about Islamophobia in India. However, he said that whatever he had done, was in the interest of the nation and not against the interest of the country. It must be mentioned here that Muslims have never complained to any country or any agency outside India as they believe that judiciary and other institutions in the country were enough to protect their rights.
After the registeration of the FIR against, Dr. Khan had told India Tomorrow that he apologized for the timings of the tweets as the country was currently passing through the menace of COVID-19 but not for the tweet per se as he did not feel that what he had done was against the interest of the country. Dr. Khan, in several of his writings in Arabic and Enligsh languages in national and international media as also on live debates on several international forums had always defended India even on complicated issues like Kashmir.
Dr. Khan had said that registration of FIR against him could not deter him from fighting against the politics of hate in the country. He had said that he stood by his “views and convictions” and “will continue, now and in future, the fight against hate politics in the country”.
He said that “FIRs, arrests and imprisonments do not change this path which I have chosen consciously to save my country, my people and the Indian secular polity and Constitution”.
Media Vilified Dr. Khan
Soon after he visited the violence-hit northeast Delhi areas of Khureji Khas, Chaman Bagh and Shivpuri etc in February and issued media statements saying that what happened in northeast Delhi was not a communal riot but “pre-mediated and one-sided attack on Muslims”, media began targeting Dr. Khan. Several people, including BJP leaders, started making demand for removal of Dr. Khan from the Delhi Minorities Commission.
But this did not deter Dr. Khan who continued to spkea in his capacity as DMC’s chairman against excesses on Muslims. Dr. Khan drew attention of the Delhi police with regard to the attacks on mosques and Muslim vendors as also members of the Tablighi Jamaat after the government agencies and media repeatedly propagated that the Tablighi congregation at its headquarters at Hazrat Nizamuddin was responsible for the corona spread in Delhi and rest of the country. He also wrote letters to police with regard to some lower level police personnel imposing ban on calling of ‘Azaan’ in several parts of Delhi, particularly in areas bordering Haryana. Police had to take immediate action in all these cases and restore the fundamental rights of the Muslims. Some arrests were also made after his complaints on attacks on Muslims as Tablighis.
Dr. Khan Asked Govt Agencies Not to Identify COVID-19 Cases on Basis of Religion as It was Promoting Islamophobia
He also did not spare the Delhi Health Ministry as also the Union Health Ministry for bifurcating the COVID-19 positive cases as those spread by coming in contact with Tablighi activists and others. This conduct of the Delhi and central government’s health ministries, stating that Tablighis, and indirectly Muslims, had chief role in propagation of corona infection, provided ammunition to a section of the media to launch a campaign of vilification against Muslim. This resulted into Islamophobia in length and breadth of the country, with hate attacks on Muslims in different parts of the country and their economic boycott by Hindu bigots in the country. Dr. Khan issued directives to both the Delhi Health Ministry as also the Union Health Ministry not to mention the name of any religious groups while releasing data or information with regard to COVID-19 because it was generating hatred against Muslims in the country. In fact, after this that the government issued directives even to media not to use the names of COVID-19 patients, suspects and those who succumbed to COVID-19.
Dr. Khan on “Illegal Mosques” in Delhi
Earlier, Dr. Khan had exposed BJP on the issue iof “illegal mosques”on government land in Delhi. When BJP MP Pravesh Verma raised the issue of “illegal mosques” on government land and submitted a list of 54 such mosques and other Muslim religious properties to Delhi LG Anil Baijal in July 2019 and announced that these buildings would be removed if BJP came to power after Delhi elections, Dr. Khan immediately ordered survey of the mosques in Delhi. He submitted to LG a report from the DMC, proving that there were no illegal mosques anywhere in Delhi that came as a big slap on the face of BJP whose very survival and growth is based on anti-Muslim rhetoric which has now become a new normal under the existing charged political atmosphere in the country.
