MP Court Acquits Muslim Men Accused of Celebrating Pakistan Victory, Finds Case 'False'; Acquitted Explain Ordeals
After a cricket match between India and Pakistan in June 2017, Madhya Pradesh police arrested 17 Muslim men for sedition and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The charge of sedition was later dropped and added promoting enmity between different groups instead. These Muslims were booked following an allegations against them of cheering for Pakistan’s victory over India and distributing sweets in the village.
However, six years after their arrest, imprisonment, verbal abuse and physical assault, the first-class magistrate Devander Sharma on October, 2023 acquitted the accused after the petitioner and the government witnesses told the court that they were forced to make false allegations against the Muslim men.
While delivering the judgement, Justice Sharma stated that after going through all the evidence, arguments and eyewitnesses, there was no proof that the accused raised slogans and burnt firecrackers. However, the effect of the incident and the trauma created by the false case still haunts the whole village.
Anees Babu Mansoori, one of the men arrested remembers the ordeal they went through in jail when they Khandwa jail. He says they were made to clean toilets and drains in the jail and were called traitors by the other jail inmates when they were locked up for a few days. “When we entered the jail, nearly a dozen senior jail inmates slapped each one of us and abused us,” recollected Mansoori, as per a report by Hindustan Times.
Reportedly, some of the news channels had also called the men traitors, helping to create propaganda against the whole village from where the Muslim men were arrested. According to one of the villagers named Rafiq Tadvi, the impact of the incident was so deep so much so that neither the villagers plays cricket nor watches it on TV when India and Pakistan were playing the match.
News website Article 14 reported that the 32-year-old alleged Imam Tadvi explained his ordeal to the news outlet that the police had pulled their heads, threatened to set them on fire if they protested and locked them up without food for two days. Even the man who came to the police station to cater tea used to kick them calling terrorists, according to Mr Tadvi. Even after bail, when they go to the police station for weekly attendance, the police used to call them traitors and terrorists until acquittal, the news portal reported.
Days after the incident, complainant Subhash Koli went to the police station to get his neighbour released and the police hit him on the back of his head saying ‘‘A Hindu has become friends with a Muslim?’
However, the Muslim body in the state accused the police of harbouring Islamophobic attitudes among the forces and creating forceful complainants.
