Kamlesh Tiwari murder: Why is needle of suspicion 'always' pointed to Muslims?

Kamlesh Tiwari

By Masood Peshimam*
It has become so easy to blame Muslims for any wrong in the country. Attuned to this scenario the needle of suspicion was immediately turned to Muslims for the murder of Kamlesh Tiwari, who was an appellant on behalf of the Hindu Mahasabha in the Ayodhya title suit. He was shot and stabbed to death at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh.
Without studying and analyzing the situation any further the Muslim card was played for his ghastly murder without any loss of time. A section of mainstream media chose to highlight the earlier incident of an alleged order issued by the Muslim clerics of Bijnor, of call for a bounty of Rs 1.5 crore for his alleged blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad. The murder mystery was solved without any loss of time.
A joint team of Uttar Pradesh police and Gujrat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) claimed it had solved the case by blowing the lid off a radicalized Islamist group in Surat, who engineered what might be the first blasphemy killing. The speed at which the murder mystery was solved is a big question.

Najeeb's mother

Shakil Rashid, in an editorial in "Urdu Times", expressing surprise over the fast investigation said that the police which failed to search Jawaharlal Nehru University student Najeeb for two years nabbed the accused without batting an eyelid. Another question has been raised as to how the accused went to Surat from Lucknow in such a short span of time without taking a flight.
Meanwhile, Kamlesh Tiwari's mother Kusum Tiwari held a BJP leader responsible for the murder, while the right-wing leader's son demanded a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe. Kusum Tiwari said, "Police must interrogate the BJP leader, a mafia don with over 100 cases registered against him. He got my son killed over a dispute regarding the construction of a temple."
It is difficult to understood as to why the statement of the family members of the victim is not taken into consideration to amplify the scope of the investigation. The expansion of the scope of the investigation is all the more needed to make skeletons tumble.

Kusum Tiwari

This is important also because one cannot hope to depend on just one factor while investigating the brutal murder. An impartial investigation would leave no chance to grievances of prejudice and bias operating at various levels of decision making in India.
---
*Advocate based in Kalyan, Maharashtra

Comments

Rushdie, Pamuk, 260 writers tell Modi: Aatish episode casts chill on public discourse

Counterview Desk
As many as 260 writers, journalists, artists, academics and activists across the world, including Salman Rushdie, British Indian novelist, Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature, and Margaret Atwood, Canadian poet and novelist, have called upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi to review the decision to strip British Indian writer Aatish Taseer of his overseas Indian citizenship.

Visually challenged lady seeks appointment with Gujarat CM, is 'unofficially' detained

By Pankti Jog*
It was a usual noon of November 10. I got a phone call on our Right to Information (RTI) helpline No 9924085000 from Ranjanben of Khambhat, narrating her “disgraceful” experience after she had requested for an appointment with Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani. She wanted to meet Rupani, on tour of the Khambhat area in Central Gujarat as part of his Janvikas Jumbesh (Campaign for Development).

There may have been Buddhist stupa at Babri site during Gupta period: Archeologist

By Rajiv Shah
A top-notch archeologist, Prof Supriya Varma, who served as an observer during the excavation of the Babri Masjid site in early 2000s along with another archeologist, Jaya Menon, has controversially stated that not only was there "no temple under the Babri Masjid”, if one goes “beyond” the 12th century to 4th to 6th century, i.e. the Gupta period, “there seems to be a Buddhist stupa.”

Church in India 'seems to have lost' moral compass of unequivocal support to the poor

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ*
In 2017, Pope Francis dedicated a special day, to be observed by the Universal Church, every year, as the ‘World Day of the Poor’. This year it will be observed on November 17 on the theme ‘The hope of the poor shall not perish for ever’; in a message for the day Pope Francis says:

Gujarat refusal to observe Maulana Azad's birthday as Education Day 'discriminatory'

By Our Representative
The Gujarat government decision not to celebrate the National Education Day on !monday has gone controversial. Civil society organizations have particularly wondered whether the state government is shying away from the occasion, especially against the backdrop of "deteriorating" level of education in Gujarat.

VHP doesn't represent all Hindus, Sunni Waqf Board all Muslims: NAPM on SC ruling

Counterview Desk
India's top civil rights network, National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), even as describing the Supreme Court's Ayodhya judgement unjust, has said, it is an "assault on the secular fabric of the Constitution". In a statement signed by top social workers and activists, NAPM said, "The judgement conveys an impression to Muslims that, despite being equal citizens of the country, their rights are not equal before the law."

Violent 'Ajodhya' campaign in 1840s after British captured Kabul, destroyed Jama Masjid

Counterview Desk Irfan Ahmad, professor at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany, and author of “Islamism and Democracy in India” (Princeton University Press, 2009), short-listed for the 2011 International Convention of Asian Scholars Book Prize for the best study in Social Sciences, in his "initial thoughts" on the Supreme Court judgment on the Babri-Jam Janmaboomi dispute has said, while order was “lawful”, it was also “awful.”

Counterview

Search This Blog