Students attacked with stones, detained for watching BBC film critical of Modi
Hindu extremists on Tuesday attacked students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), one of India’s premier institutes of higher education, in New Delhi when they organized a screening of a BBC documentary on Hindu supremacist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the killings of nearly 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002.
JNU students said the university also intentionally cut off power to stop them from playing the documentary. Those who attacked the documentary viewers were allegedly members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The students had gathered at one place to watch the documentary on their mobile phones and laptops.
Elsewhere in the Indian capital, the police detained four students of Jamia Millia Islamia, another top university, after the students announced plans to screen the documentary.
Modi’s Hindu supremacist government has dismissed the documentary as “propaganda” blocked its airing in India, including on social media.
The documentary, aired by BBC in London last week, has claimed that a team sent by the UK government to inquire into the 2002 killings found that Modi, who was then the state’s chief minister, had deliberately stopped the police from stopping violence targeted at Muslims and was “directly responsible for a climate of impunity” that led to the violence.
Court acquits Hindu extremists accused of killing Muslims in 2002 massacre
Once again proving that India’s courts are now working to the diktat of India’s Hindu supremacist movement, a court in Gujarat state acquitted 22 Hindu extremists who were accused of killing 17 Muslims, including two children, during the 2002 anti-Muslim massacre.
On February 28, 2002, Hindu extremists from the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) unleashed massive violence against Muslims in Gujarat that went on for weeks killing nearly 2,000 Muslims.
Some 20,000 Muslim homes and businesses and 360 places of worship were destroyed. About 150,000 Muslims were displaced.
In Halol district, 17 people, including children, were killed and their bodies set on fire.
The accused had been out of prison since 2004 after the Gujarat High Court had granted them bail.
Police deny permission for launch of book on Muslim woman killed in fake encounter
Censorship in India is relentless. Now, police in the BJP-ruled Maharashtra state have refused permission for a scheduled event to release a book on the killing of a Muslim woman in a fake encounter in Gujarat from the time when Modi was Chief Minister.
Wahid Shaikh, the author of the book titled “Ishrat Jahan Encounter,” said two venues had canceled on them without stating any reasons. The police later issued a notice to the organizers asking them not to hold the event.
“In Ishrat Jahan’s case, all police officials who were arrested were let off because the government did not give permission to prosecute them. No one was punished in the case. An innocent girl was killed. My aim was to bare all facts related to the case,” said Shaikh.
In June 2004, Jahan and three others were killed in a fake encounter with security forces. The police had falsely claimed that the four had links with terrorist groups. However, a special investigation team set up by the High Court found the encounter to be fake.
