New Delhi: Two Hindu organisations – the Hindu Front for Justice and the Hindu Sena – have moved the Supreme Court seeking a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into alleged hate speeches made by Muslim leaders against the Hindu community and Hindu gods, Bar and Bench reported on Sunday, January 23.
The two Hindu groups have filed an intervention application on the case seeking an SIT investigation into the speeches made at the Dharma Sansad held between December 17 and 19 last year in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, which is already being heard by the apex court.
The original petition had been filed by former Patna high court Justice Anjana Prakash and journalist Qurban Ali and sought the Supreme Court’s directions for an independent and impartial probe into the anti-Muslim hate speeches and alleged calls for genocide made at the Haridwar event as well as at an event in Delhi organised by the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV) between the same dates.
On January 10, a bench led by Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana had agreed to take up the matter and on January 12, the Supreme Court issued notice on the plea and sought responses from both the Union and Uttarakhand governments.
Also read: ‘Brink of an Impending Genocide’: Indian Diaspora Demands Arrest of Haridwar Dharma Sansad Speakers
The present application, filed through advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, has cited at least 25 instances of alleged hate speech against Hindus and has asked the top court to “direct an SIT to investigate the hate speeches given against the Hindu community, their gods and goddesses.”
The Hindu groups’ application also sought for several state governments to file FIRs against a number of Muslim political leaders in the country, including the AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi and Waris Pathan, the Ittehad-e-Millat Council’s (IEMC) Tauqeer Raza, the All India Imam Association’s (AIIA) Sajid Rashidi and the AAP’s Amanatullah Khan.
The application contends that these leaders made incendiary speeches which created an “atmosphere of fear and unrest” among the Hindu community, comparing them to the Muslim League at the time of India’s Partition. It also alleged that the speeches made at the events at Haridwar, New Delhi and beyond were responses to alleged hate speech by Muslim leaders.
The application also said, “The petitioner belongs to the Muslim community and is not supposed to raise objections against affairs or activities related to Hindu Dharm Sansad (sic),” according to a report by NDTV.
On January 14, the Uttarakhand police had arrested Jitendra Narayan Tyagi (formerly known as Waseem Risvi), one of the central organisers of the Dharma Sansad, from Haridwar’s Roorkee and later, on January 15, they arrested the other key organiser of the event, militant Hindutva leader Yati Narsinghanand Giri (formerly, Saraswati).
Both of them have since been denied bail.