terror

Shopian: Labourer Killed by CRPF Jawans, Family Says ‘Shot in Cold Blood’

While a J&K police spokesperson claimed that Shahid Ahmad Rather was killed in crossfire after “unidentified terrorists” attacked a team of the CRPF’s 178 Battalion, the family contest this claim.

Srinagar: A day after the Union home minister Amit Shah reviewed the security situation in Kashmir, a 20-year-old civilian was shot dead under suspicious circumstances on Sunday morning near a CRPF camp in Shopian district.

A senior police officer identified the deceased as Shahid Ahmad Rather, a resident of the Arwani area in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district. A daily-wage labourer, Shahid was reportedly hired by a farmer to help with harvesting the apple crop.

Zubair Ahmad Rather, his younger brother, told The Wire that the victim was returning home on Sunday morning along with two friends when the incident happened. “He was walking few metres ahead of them when the CRPF troopers fired at him near Zainapora.”

“It is a targeted killing,” Zubair continued, struggling to hold back his tears. “They shot him in cold blood. There was no cross firing in the area. If it has happened with us, it can happen to anyone. They are killing innocent people and branding them as militants. We want justice.”

Zubair Ahmad Rather, Shahid’s younger brother. Photo: Faizan Mir

A Jammu and Kashmir police spokesperson, however, claimed that “unidentified terrorists” attacked a team of the CRPF’s 178 Battalion in Babapora area of Shopian district, adding, “CRPF retaliated the fire and during cross firing, one unidentified person got killed. Further details are being ascertained.”

There were no reports of fatalities or injuries suffered by CRPF officers during the suspected attack.

The victim, a Class X dropout, is the eldest among four siblings and the major bread-earner of the family. He is survived by a grandmother, parents and a younger brother. The parents were on their way to Shopian to collect the body of their son when this report was filed.

“We are a poor family. He dropped out of school last year to earn and support his father. Was that his fault? He was not a militant. Why did they kill him in cold blood then?” his grandmother Azi Begum screamed as neighbours tried to console her at their residence.

Shahi’s grandmother Azi Begum. Photo: Faizan Mir

A graphic photo from the scene of the shooting, which went viral on social media, shows Shahid’s head against the tyre of a mini-truck. His legs are stretched and his hands are inside a pheran, the woollen cloak worn by Kashmiris to beat the winter chill.

The door to the truck’s driver’s seat is open. Blood smears a patch of the road and the white metal body of the vehicle where the door closes, suggesting that the victim’s body may have been staged before it was photographed.

Scattered on the road around the slain youngster’s body are freshly plucked apples and a white bag which apparently contained them.

“He had been away for four to five days. He quit school to make some money and help his family. They are a below poverty line family. His killing has shocked the entire village,” said a neighbour who didn’t want to be identified.

This is the second civilian killing in the month of October involving the Central paramilitary forces and it took place on the day when the Union home minister is in the union territory as part of the government’s J&K outreach programme.

On October 7, Parvez Ahmad Khan, a poor nomad and the breadwinner of his family of seven – including two minor daughters and pregnant wife besides ageing parents – was killed by CRPF officers in Anantnag.

Parvez, who belongs to the nomadic community, was allegedly travelling with another person in a plateless Mahindra Scorpio car which was signalled to halt at a CRPF checkpoint in Anantnag’s Rooh-Monghal village.

“However, it [the car] rushed towards the checkpoint. It was then challenged by the on-duty troops. Troops fired upon [the car] in self defence, in which one person died. But the driver of the vehicle managed to escape from the spot,” a J&K police official had said.

Parvez’s family allege that the CRPF officers acted in haste and shot Parvez without following the standard operating procedure. The family had demanded an impartial probe into the incident.

Both the CRPF and J&K Police have not revealed the identity of the second person travelling in Parvez’s car. There are no details about whether the matter was being probed at all or the progress of the investigation.

CRPF’s inspector general (Kashmir), Charu Sharma, could not be reached for comment.

Photo: Faizan Mir

Spike in violence

Kashmir has recorded a spike in insurgency-related violence this year, leaving close to three dozen civilians dead, including political workers. Over the last two weeks, at least 10 civilians – mostly migrant workers and members of Kashmir’s minority communities, have been killed in suspected militant attacks.

Most of these attacks took place in Srinagar, which was declared militancy free just a year ago. Several police and other security officials were also killed by ‘hybrid militants’ in “shoot-and-scoot” attacks, which has emerged as a major challenge for Kashmir’s counterterrorism grid.

Security forces have responded to the challenge by stepping up counterinsurgency operations across Kashmir, killing 17 militants, most of them untrained recruits affiliated with the Resistance Front. Many of them had recently become militants.

Speaking at Srinagar’s Sher-e-Kashmir International Convocation Centre, Shah, who will return to Srinagar from Jammu by Sunday evening, had beckoned youngsters in Kashmir on Saturday to “become friends” with him but the latest killing in Shopian is likely to dampen the call.

“This how you want to befriend youth of Kashmir, how you want to ‘establish’ peace @AmitShah ji? Are we allowed to even condemn ‘other’ victims like Parvaiz & Shahid? I don’t know about golden letters in history but pages of Aug 5 book are certainly stained with lot of blood,” Peoples Democratic Party spokesperson Najmu Saqib tweeted.

The party chief and former J&K chief minister Mehbooba Mufti tweeted: “Another innocent civilian killed allegedly by CRPF in Shopian today. Its sad that armed forces show little restraint & operate with such impunity. My heartfelt condolences to his family.”

National Conference’s provincial spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar said, “Heartwrenching image of young man killed in Shopian. Shahid Ajaz, they say, was in his milk van, his arms inside his pheran, trying to make ends meet and was ‘caught in cross firing. No accountability. Pain that Kashmir has borne and continues to bear is beyond anyone’s measure.”

The US Is Shifting Focus to ‘Domestic Terrorism’. Here’s What That Means for Global Politics.

The elevation of domestic terrorism as the biggest internal security threat by the US signals the beginning of the post-‘war on terror’ phase of global politics.

Recently, US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled a National Strategy to Counter Domestic Terrorism (NSCDT). The Biden administration is of the view that “domestic terrorism” has evolved into the most urgent terrorism threat faced by the US.

The NSCDT has come in the backdrop of the announcement of complete US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, two decades after the 9/11 attacks. This is a significant development because since the 9/11 attacks, most of the American, and indeed global, political landscape has come to be dominated by the issue of combatting terrorism. In such a context, this reframing of the discourse of terror has major political and ideological implications which reflect the shifting contours of global politics.

The politics of terrorism

Terrorism is a political act because unlike other violent crimes, acts of terror, are triggered by ideological convictions based upon which the terrorists intend to re-shape society. Therefore, deciding what constitutes terrorism is one of the most important political decisions that modern nation-states make. Defining terrorism is the act of delimiting the political community. In other words, it is an act of delegitimising and excluding certain kinds of political claims from the polity.

More importantly, defining what constitutes terrorism is the sole prerogative of the state as no individual or organisation ever willingly accepts this label. States have used this privilege as a tool to frame the political discourse in terms of a choice between rights and security, thereby, enhancing their own power at the cost of their citizens. Furthermore, states have used the fear induced by acts of terror to stifle public reason in order to manufacture consent to pursue their goals at home and abroad. Domestically these acts have included suspending liberties, targeting dissidents, stigmatising minorities and entrenching authoritarianism, while in the arena of foreign policy this has entailed imposing economic sanctions and waging wars.

Also read: QAnon Followers in the US May Become More Violent, FBI Warns

Therefore, how the state chooses to frame the discourse of terrorism is as important as the act of terror which compels it to do so. For the last three decades, the discourse of terror has been framed through the civilisational lens.

Terror and the clash of civilisations

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Huntington in his (in)famous thesis, anticipated that in this phase of history, ideological and economic conflicts would be replaced by a clash of civilisations. This era would be characterised by the conflict between the west and the rest, and the direction of global politics would be defined by the alliances and conflicts among a handful of major civilisations. In this framework, culture was the primary determinant of politics as opposed to economic interests. The question, “Which side are you on?” was replaced by, “What are you?”; ideas replaced by identity. This essentialised and cultural restatement of international politics was in line with the neoliberal intellectual project which aimed to explain the world primarily through the lens of identity rather than class.

The neoconservative Bush administration used this frame as an ideological justification for its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq following the 9/11 attacks. Bush described the “War on Terror” as the ‘struggle for civilisation’. In his articulation, terror became the other of civilisation; whereas, civilisation came to be defined through American values or precepts of liberal democracy. The ‘war on terror’ established “Islam” as an illiberal opponent of the ideas of liberty, democracy and decency in popular consciousness. This civilisational definition of terror was milked by majoritarian political projects across the world to marginalise Muslims within their countries and vice-versa.

Clash within civilisation?

However, the world changed after the global financial crisis. Trump inherited an aggressive China, a sluggish economy and an unequal society. His entire political platform was based on ending the expansive neoconservative ambitions of the US in the world and focusing at home. However, he fed off and exacerbated the existing stigma around Islam and indulged in open Muslim-baiting to consolidate his predominantly white-conservative base.

More importantly, his presidency saw unprecedented racial polarisation, white nationalist mobilisation and mass shootings by avowed white supremacists. Such instances were not unprecedented; however, Trump bestowed them with legitimacy by his acts of omission and equivocation. These sporadic incidents all culminated in the attack on the Capitol Hill following the speech by Trump encouraging his supporters to march in protest. The clash within civilisation could no longer be concealed.

Also read: ‘Vaccine Nationalism Is a Norm Under Capitalism, the World Needs Internationalism’

According to the Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism data, since 2015, there have been 85 acts of domestic terrorism of varying intensity in the US. Since 9/11, 107 Americans have lost their lives due to Islamist fundamentalist terror while domestic terrorism has accounted for 114 deaths in the same period. It is within this context, that the Biden administration has turned the gaze back inwards and declared domestic terrorism as the most pressing threat to US internal security.

In a way, it is a continuation of the isolationism initiated by the Trump administration. However, locating the root of domestic terrorism within the ideology of racial supremacy and acknowledging the urgent need to disrupt the dehumanisation of and violence against ethnic and religious minorities – including Muslims – is a fundamental shift from the earlier the civilisational paradigm to define terrorism. Thus, NSCDT can be seen as a pivot back to ideology from identity with regard to defining terrorism.

Conclusion

The elevation of domestic terrorism as the biggest internal security threat by the US signals the beginning of the post-‘war on terror’ phase of global politics. The US has once again shifted the anchors of the discourse of terrorism from civilisational identity to political ideology. It is a tacit acceptance that the liberal order is under attack not only from religious fundamentalism outside but from ethnic majoritarianism within the polity as well. This has important implications for the rest of the world, and especially, majoritarian projects across the world which have fed off this discourse, as now they cannot pin terrorism to only one civilisation and might be forced to look within. Just like Biden’s America…

Anshul Trivedi completed his MPhil from the Centre for Political Studies, JNU. He is an activist and a freelance journalist. He tweets @anshultrivedi47.

Why the PIL for Removal of Verses From Quran is So Fundamentally Wrong

The petitioner displays both an ignorance of the critical scholarship that has engaged with the text for centuries, and of social structures in which dogma develops.

In the film Jojo Rabbit, what does the rabbit symbolise?

The film is about 10-year-old Johannes “Jojo” Betzler, who is a member of ‘Hitler Youth’. Once when Jojo is at Nazi camp, he is encouraged to kill a rabbit by some older boys to prove that he is ‘brave’ like a good Nazi ought to be. Thus, in that moment, the rabbit starts to signify all the many demands that would be made on Jojo’s intellect by his fascist friends. It also comes to signify his own cowardice.

A public interest petition has been filed in the Supreme Court asking that 26 verses of the Quran, which the petitioner finds predisposed towards inciting violence amongst believers, must be so assessed and “removed”. A similar writ that had been filed before the Calcutta high court in 1985 demanding a ban on the holy book for allegedly promoting ‘disharmony between communities’ was dismissed in the same year.

The writ of 1985 sought a ban on written copies of the Quran, even though there has always been a preponderance of the oral tradition, of memorising and reciting the Quran, and passing it on from one generation to another. The present writ, in any case, encourages a ‘re-moulding’, to be carried out by the Supreme Court, such that we might have a ‘new Quran’ at the end of the exercise.

The petition that the canonical text be assessed for propriety and accordingly changed by an independent arbiter is made more to debase believers, than in any spirit of engagement with the canon. Evidently, the petitioner has very little sense of the critical scholarship on the Quran, or of different socio-political contexts in which dogma has developed, or even of the constantly shifting meanings that the Quran takes in the lives of Muslims across the world: from scholarly canon to amulet.

Farid Esack, anti-apartheid activist, theologian and professor of religion says in his book Quran: A User’s Guide, “…from scholar to Sufi, from the homemaker desiring to stretch a meal to feed an extra mouth, to the terrified child confronting an approaching dog, from the liberal modernist scholar, or a radical revolutionary, from the laid back traditionalist cleric to the Kalashnikov toting Afghan tribalist, the Quran provides [different] meanings.”

Also read: The Lessons of Ali Shariati Are As Relevant For Shias Today as They Were In His Lifetime

For Muslims, the Quran is the divine word of Allah that was revealed to his prophet. Sometimes, the revelations were orally recited. “The angel Jibril (Gabriel) is believed to have uttered the direct words of God into Muhammad’s ear and/ heart.” At other times, they took the form of textual visions.

Each revelatory episode was reportedly, physically and emotionally, agonising for the prophet. “Never once did I receive a revelation without thinking that my soul had been torn away from me.” The nature and modes of revelation, its authenticity, as that of its recipient have all been critically examined during the long history of Islam. Muslims maintain that Muhammad always made a clear distinction between his own speech and that which he claimed to receive from God.

However, Esack speaks of two other views, which he describes as differing from the mainstream Muslim one: “that the Quran is the product of some part of Muhammad’s personality other than the conscious mind, and that it is the work of the divine personality but produced through the personality of Muhammad in such a way that certain features of the Quran are to be ascribed primarily to the humanity of Muhammad.”

The revelations continued over a long period of time (between 610 and 632 AD), sometimes in response to immediate crises, and at other times a more general ethical discourse on the social, political life of the community. Esack also describes the ‘complaint of Umm Salamah’, one of the wives of the prophet, to suggest that ‘the Quran is also a [two-way] conversation with the believers’. Umm Salamah’s account states that she told the prophet: “I see that God mentions men but omits women.” According to her, in response to ‘the complaint’, several verses were revealed that directly addressed women.

Esack even now treats his engagement with the Quran as an intense conversation, where he treats the text not as abstract ethics, but something that must speak to his lived realities (but of that later).

Farid Esack writes that the word “Quran” is derived from the Arabic word Qara’a (to read), but also from Qarana (to gather or collect). The word “Quran” is mentioned in several verses of the Qur’an in the sense of a ‘fundamentally oral and certainly an ongoing reality’. The second form of “Quran” on the other hand, refers to the ‘written and closed codex, as was later represented by the written codex’.

During the reign of the third Caliph, Usman (644-656), as time moved on after the Prophet’s demise and also as the Muslim empire began to spread, there were concerns about authentic renderings of the divine word. The third Caliph undertook the collection of existing suhuf (parchments of writings that recorded parts of the Quran), its editing and arrangement into a complete codex. Apart from some early extremist Shi’a groups, there is consensus on the authenticity of the Usmanic codex.

Even within Muslims theologians who absolutely believed that the text was the work of divine personality, there still existed some differences about the nature of the text itself. The Mu’tazilites, for instance, believed that ‘God’s immutability was such that to suggest that even divine revelations shared in His attributes would detract from God’s utter beyondness.’

The ensuing theological debate mirrored the tension between the idea of a text, which has always existed outside history, with that which sees a tangible relationship between the text and the “personality unto whom it was revealed”. Esack says that there had existed a rarified debate on whether the Quran was makhluq (created), or ‘laysa bi makhluq’ (not really created).

However, in the first half of the ninth century, the somewhat non-assertive “not really created” was replaced by a more definitive “ghair makhluq” (uncreated). It was a theoretical debate ‘until the state under Abbasid Caliphs began to take an interest in the question. During the reign of al-Mamun (833 AD), the Mihnah (inquisition) was established wherein prominent personalities were forced to profess the “createdness” of the Quran.

The repression unleashed during the Mihnah polarised the debate to a hitherto unknown degree and the new ‘orthodox’ Islam asserted its ideas with rigidity that was alien to the Muslims preceding the Mihnah. Esack argues that there is a definite connection in the way that dogma develops and the socio-political environment wherein it develops.

Although I have only cited an example from 833 AD above, theological debates on rather controversial issues have continued through the history of Islam. In modern times, the work of Ali Shariati who famously said: “It is not enough to say we must return to Islam. We must specify which Islam: that of Abu Zarr or that of Marwan the Ruler. Both are called Islamic, but there is a huge difference between them. One is the Islam of the caliphate, of the palace and of the rulers. The other is the Islam of the people, of the exploited and of the poor. Moreover, it is not good enough to say that one should be “concerned” about the poor. The corrupt caliphs said the same. True Islam is more than “concerned.” It instructs the believer to fight for justice, equality and elimination of poverty.”

A shot of the holy Quran in a mosque in Cairo. Photo: Al Hussainy MohamedFlickr, CC BY 2.0

The present sense of siege, and subsequent hurt and humiliation (and resentment) felt by Muslims with regard to any discussion about Islam is thus not on account of any intrinsic incapability to critically debate dogma, but rather more due to the exercise of power on their intellectual, emotional and physical selves.

In contrast to ‘Muslim religious space’, the Supreme Court has naturally no experience of theological debates. Talal Asad has said that it is the ‘secular paradox’ that each time a secular institution is called upon to delineate the domain of the secular from that of the religious, it has to perform a quasi-religious role in determining what is truly religious. Here too, the Supreme Court is being called upon to perform an essentially theological function in interpreting verses of the Quran.

Also read: ‘Nikah Halala’ Review: A Scathing Indictment of a Practice That Has No Quranic Sanction

Text and context

In rabbit world, there is an odd idea that sees individual minds as being highly suggestible, and without any ability to critically think through discourses that they encounter. The authoritarian state therefore tends to panic at any kind of public dissent and treats it like a very infectious disease. The petitioner’s concerns about the effect of certain verses on Muslim minds paints them in the same vein – as blank receptacles, without much aptitude for context and comprehension.

Such an attitude is also instructive since the petitioner (although now disowned) has in the past represented ‘Muslim institutional space’ in India. Ironically, while claiming to ‘protect’ Muslim religious cultural traditions, such spaces have not produced any critical engagement with religion or with culture.

Esack’s other works Quran, Liberation and Pluralism and On Being a Muslim discuss the successful attempt by South African Muslim youth, during apartheid, to escape fossilised engagements with the Quran. “More than 14 centuries after the revelation of the Quran, in a far southern corner of Africa, believers in the Quran have opened their lives and struggles to the meaning of its message. They have asked the text to enter their context of oppression and struggle for freedom.”

In order to relate Quranic meaning to the South African struggle, the progressive Islamists introduced the idea of the “historical moment”. This approach enabled many a progressive Islamist in South Africa to resist the apartheid regime in complete solidarity with black and Christian anti-apartheid activists, emotionally inhabit churches, etc. “despite the Quranic warning to those of faith against ‘taking the Christians and Jews as their awliya (friends/allies/supporters).”

The progressive Islamists also emphasised the Quranic invocation to always support the mustad’afun (the oppressed), whether they are Muslim or not. “The engaged interpreter approached the text with a conscious decision to search for meaning, which responds creatively to the suffering of the mustad’afun and holds out the most promise for liberation and justice […] If a single concept could be said to have been the axis around which Muslim resistance to apartheid rotated, it was that of justice for the oppressed and marginalised. Verses from the Quran denouncing injustice and demanding justice were tirelessly invoked. Over time, the idea of justice progressed beyond racial equality, to distribute justice and also to socio-religious liberation of women.”

In conclusion, there are all these possibilities in a participatory and liberatory approach to religion. However, it involves more access and critical engagement with text, rather than calls for hiding it away from believers, or from choosing to ignore the socio-economic and political structures within which they exist.

Shahrukh Alam is a lawyer practising in New Delhi.

UP Police Chargesheets Siddique Kappan, 7 Others on Charges of Sedition, Conspiracy, Terror

Despite reports to the contrary, the police has linked all the accused, including journalist Kappan, to the PFI.

New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh police’s special task force (STF) has chargesheeted eight people, including Popular Front of India’s students’ wing leader K.A. Rauf Sherif and journalist Siddique Kappan, in a Mathura court on charges of sedition, criminal conspiracy, funding of terror activities and other offences, news reports said.

According to the New Indian Express, the others named in the chargesheet are Atiqur Rehman, Mohammad Danish, Alam, Masood Ahmad, Feroz Khan and Asad Badruddin. They have been accused of receiving funds to the tune of Rs 80 lakh from financial institutions based in Muscat and Doha for the purpose of creating unrest and riots in Uttar Pradesh.

They are members of the Campus Front of India (CFI), the student wing of the Popular Front of India (PFI), the news reports said. However, Kappan’s lawyers and journalists’ bodies from Kerala have repeatedly said that the reporter has no links with the PFI. PFI too has said Kappan is not a member of the organisation.

While five of the accused were present in the court, Badruddin and Khan attended the hearing through video conferencing.

According to LiveLaw, defence counsel Madhuban Dutt said that they will consider moving the high court after going through the 5,000-page chargesheet.

The accused have been chargesheeted under Indian Penal Code sections of 153 (A) promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language), 124(A) (sedition), 295 (A) (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings) and 120(B) (criminal conspiracy), the defence counsel told LiveLaw.

The report added that they have also been charged with sections 17 and 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) related to raising funds for terror acts and various sections of the IT Act.

Also read: Siddique Kappan Beaten, Subjected To Mental Torture in Custody: Journalists’ Union

According to LiveLaw, the defence counsel claimed that Badruddin and Khan have been falsely implicated in an alleged case of serial blasts in Lucknow and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh. They are lodged in Lucknow jail.

The report further said that the counsel alleged Kappan, who has diabetes and Rahman, who is a heart patient, were denied food for 24 hours in Mathura jail. “They were not served any food after 5.00 pm on Friday till 4.30 pm of Saturday while they were in the court,” the counsel said, according to the report.

The case will be next heard on May 1.

UP’s proposal to ban PFI

On October 5, 2020, the STF had arrested Kappan and three others (Rehman, Ahmad and Alam) in Mathura while they were on their way to Hathras for covering the gang-rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman by four upper caste men.

The FIR against them claimed that they were going to Hathras with an intention “to breach the peace” as part of a “conspiracy”.

Uttar Pradesh Police in its affidavit alleged that Kappan was using a journalist cover by showing identity card of a Kerela-based newspaper, which was closed in 2018. However, in January, the Kerala Union of Working Journalists told the Supreme Court that UP Police’s statement about Kappan being the office secretary of PFI is “false and incorrect”.

Also read: Siddique Kappan: SC Says Media Reports on Previous Order ‘Unfair’, Allows Lawyers To Meet Scribe

In February, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed its first chargesheet against the PFI and its students’ wing on charges of money laundering, claiming its members wanted to “incite communal riots and spread terror” in the aftermath of the Hathras gang rape case. However, PFI issued a statement saying Kappan and four others named in the chargesheet are not its members.

Formed in 2006 as a federation of the National Development Fund (NDF), PFI calls itself a socio-political movement that works towards the empowerment of the Muslims and other marginalised sections of society.

According to the Indian Express, the NDF was formed in Kerala in 1993 and subsequently emerged as the Manitha Neethi Pasarai (MNP) in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) in Karnataka.

The organisation has been accused of multiple violent and extremist incidents by different state governments. In 2020, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in UP had written to the Ministry of Home Affairs recommending a ban on PFI. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath had alleged PFI’s involvement in “masterminding” violence during the protests against Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens.

Nineteen PFI members were arrested in December 2019 by Lucknow Police charging them with possession of inflammatory literature, posters, CDs and banners. However, due to lack of any “substantial evidence”, they were granted bail.

In 2019, the Jharkhand government had banned the PFI in the state under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1908. Earlier, the state government had banned the organisation in 2018, however, the Jharkhand high court had set aside the government notification saying it had not been published in the gazette after PFI member Abdul Badud challenged the order banning the organisation.

In 2020, when anti-CAA protests were at their peak in the country, the Centre had decided to defer a ban on PFI.

Book Review: Syria Caught in the Vortex of Regional and Global Competitions

Former ambassador to Syria Rajendra Abhyankar’s ‘Syria: The Tragedy of a Pivotal State’ goes well beyond the author’s diplomatic experience, and encompasses several later visits to Syria during the decade-old confrontations.

The civil conflict in Syria has now entered its tenth year. It has already taken the lives of about half a million people and displaced over 11 million, about half of whom are refugees in neighbouring countries, eking out a miserable existence in squalid tent cities and dependent on the charity of international donors. The greater tragedy is that there is no prospect even now of the end of the conflict, nor is there any credible peace process underway from any source. The misery of the Syrian people is not likely to end any time soon.

It is bewildering that a small state at the edge of West Asia should generate so much violence and such intense competitions among such a large number of players – domestic and external – and yet obtain such limited attention from international media. India’s premier scholar-diplomat, Rajendra Abhyankar, former ambassador to Syria and secretary in the foreign office dealing with West Asia and North Africa, has, in his book Syria: The Tragedy of a Pivotal State, provided a remarkably comprehensive and lucid account of Syrian history and politics and explained the wellsprings and course of the ongoing contentions.

Syria: The Tragedy of a Pivotal State
Rajendra M. Abhyankar
Palgrave-MacMillan/Springer Nature, Singapore, 2020

Wellsprings of war

The present state of Syria was shaped in 1924 and was part of the French “mandate”. Syria is a mosaic of diverse faiths, sects and ethnicities; it is home to Sunni and Shia Muslims, the Alawi and Druze communities, different Christian denominations, and ethnic groups such as the Kurd, Turkoman and Armenian.

For the last 50 years, it has been ruled by the father-son duo, Hafez al Assad (1970-2000) and his son, Basher al Assad, who belong to the Shia Alawite sect, but have maintained a secular order under the umbrella of the Ba’ath Party, whose ideology is an amalgam of Arab nationalism and socialism. They have maintained an authoritarian order supported by co-opting different sections of the population. Abhyankar describes Syria as a “pluralistic state” and points out that Basher al Assad enjoys “support from key elements of Syrian society”.

Syria’s political culture, the author says, is founded on deep hostility to the West, a desire to maintain national homogeneity on the basis of fervent appeals to nationalism, and the continuous nurturing of a sense of crisis, literally a “state of emergency” that was enforced in the country from 1963 to 2011. This order has little room for dissent: in 1982, Hafez al Assad destroyed Hama and killed several thousand people in his attempt to annihilate the threat from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abhyankar offers an interesting take on the sources of present-day popular discontent: eco-sectarianism. This phenomenon, he says, “explains the relationship between sectarian violence and environmental pressures in fragmented and unequal societies with a weak sense of national consciousness and languishing nation-building projects”.

He points out that Syria had for several years been making profligate use of its water resources: its massive irrigation projects depleted its ground water. Hence, the drought of 2006-10 led to a humanitarian disaster, forcing thousands of farmers, most of them Sunni, to migrate to towns as “environmental refugees”.

What caused resentment was the poor handling of the crisis, that engendered a sense of victimhood among the poorer Sunnis. The author notes: “It is clear that bad environmental conditions and non-existent management by the Syrian government had a negative effect on communal harmony.” From this cauldron of deep resentment the present conflict was born.

In March 2011, as the Arab Spring uprisings spread across North Africa and West Asia, some teenage boys inscribed anti-Assad graffiti on the walls of a high school in Dara’a. They were held in police custody and tortured for several weeks. This ignited popular outrage that spread across several other Syrian towns.

Also read: Watch | Capturing The Syrian Civil War in Words and Art

Left to his own devices, Assad could perhaps have handled this crisis successfully; but he just did not have that opportunity. Neighbouring countries – Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – entered the fray to overthrow Assad and place a Sunni leader in Damascus. They backed a variety of Islamist militant groups – at one time their number exceeded 1,500 – with weapons and logistical and financial support.

The Syrian conflict emerged from such innocuous origins, but the country today is the theatre for several players to pursue their interests in this brutal quagmire.

Players in the conflict

Abhyankar anchors the contemporary Syrian story in its status as a “pivotal state” – a state that must necessarily be dominated by an external power if the latter seeks to control the region. Syria’s location at the edge of Asia and as the “bridge” to Africa gives it a special geo-strategic importance. Control over Syria, the author points out, “gives the ability to secure political advantage through control over the flow of goods, people and activities between several (sub) continents”.

Specifically, in the context of West Asian competitions, Syria shares borders with five countries. It is thus deeply embedded in the Israel-Palestine issue as also the aspirations of the Kurds for their independent homeland and the attendant cross-border contentions with Iran, Iraq and Turkey where their people reside. The diverse mosaic of sect and ethnicity that makes up Syria’s population also makes it a part of the deep sectarian divide between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the reverberations of this confrontation in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

Syria’s “pivotal” character has brought in extra-regional players as well – Russia and the US – whose competition at the global platform to maintain or overturn the existing world order (the US and Russia, respectively) has made it a battleground in their larger struggle.

Syria’s civil conflict and the breakdown of state order have also provided congenial space for extremist elements to expand their influence and territorial domain. The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) sent a detachment into war-torn Syria in early 2012, which became the best rebel fighting force in the country by the end of the year.

The Syrian branch proclaimed its affiliation with Al Qaeda, while the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), that emerged in 2013, blurred the Syria-Iraq border and made itself a transnational proto-state the size of the United Kingdom, with a population of nearly nine million, a standing army of 100,000 militants, and monthly income of several million dollars.

Competing interests

The regime-change project and the war on the ISIS coalesced in Syria. The US led the multi-national coalition against ISIS; it also backed the Syrian Kurds who were hoping to shape their “Rojava” (‘western homeland’) across the Syria-Turkish border. The US built up the Kurds as a cohesive fighting force, the Syrian Democratic Forces, who decimated the ISIS caliphate in Syria in December 2018 and then killed its leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in Syria in October 2019.

The Assad regime has from the outset enjoyed the support of its long-standing strategic partner, Iran, which has mobilised personnel, weapons and finance on its behalf, despite the crushing sanctions it is experiencing at home.

Russia entered the conflict in support of Assad for strategic and political reasons: it is totally opposed to externally-sponsored regime change and also wishes to retain its military bases in Syria at the Mediterranean coast as part of its broader interest in maintaining a presence in and having a say on major global contentions. The support of Russia and Iran has ensured that the tide of battle has turned and Assad now controls most of Syria and the issue of his removal is no longer on the agenda.

The territorial successes of the Kurds along the border pose an “existential” threat for Turkey. In a major reversal, it has abandoned the Islamist alliance and the regime-change project and joined Russia and Iran in the Astana peace process. This has achieved a ceasefire on most fronts. The exception is the northern Idlib region, where Turkey is seeking to get the Islamist fighters on to its side and use them to back its confrontation with the Kurds in the northeast. Idlib, with a three-million population and about 50,000 militants, remains a flashpoint as Syria and Russia are mobilised for an assault to liberate this last rebel-held bastion.

Also read: The Winter of No WiFi – ‘Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War’

The US position has seen several twists and turns and remains confusing. After the defeat of ISIS, Trump was anxious to get his soldiers back home. He was willing to sacrifice his Kurdish allies by inviting Turkish troops into the northeast and thinning out US presence. On the other hand, his officials wanted to maintain a US military presence for strategic reasons – to confront Russia and Iran. The arrangement struck between Trump and his officials is that just about 500 soldiers will remain to guard the oil fields, a situation that is viewed as unsatisfactory by all parties.

The other change taking place is that of the Gulf Arab nations: initially hostile to Assad and committed to regime-change, they are now attempting to re-build ties with the regime to challenge Iran as the sole arbiter in Syrian affairs.

Outlook

After ten years, the Syrian conflict has reached endgame. But, though the fighting has abated, numerous unresolved issues remain: the fate of Idlib and the future of Kurdish aspirations. Again, Turkey’s wish to maintain a long-term presence in north Syria conflicts with the interest of Assad, Iran and Russia to achieve a unified and sovereign Syria. And, then, there are the urgent matters relating to reconstruction and the return of displaced persons: reconstruction will cost several hundred billion dollars at a time when geopolitical competitions remain unresolved.

An internally displaced Syrian boy runs in a olive field, in Azaz, Syria, March 11, 2020. Photo: Reuters

Above all, there is the contentious matter of working on a political process that will decide the future shape of the Syrian political order – framing a new constitution that provides for its territorial integrity, the accommodation of its diverse communities, and democratic and federal institutions – all of this in a landscape that has only seen authoritarian rule for fifty years and destructive conflict over the last ten.

Given his rich diplomatic experience, Abhyankar offers a number of approaches that would take the political process forward. This would require the active involvement of the UN and the support of the diverse nations that have so far been encouraging conflict in this “pivotal” state to subserve their interests. There is so far no evidence of their interest in peace; competitions in Syria will continue and could occasionally become lethal.

The narrative of the book goes well beyond the author’s diplomatic experience, and encompasses several later visits to Syria during the decade-old confrontations and interviews with Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries. These personal engagements are supported by substantial academic research. This has made the book a major contribution to the international discourse relating to Syria and West Asian affairs in general and a valuable reference source for years to come.

Talmiz Ahmad, a former diplomat, holds the Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies, Symbiosis International University, Pune, and is Consulting Editor, The Wire.

Singapore Arrests Bangladeshi Man for Planning To Fight in Kashmir

Preliminary investigations by the Internal Security Department show that Ahmed Faysal was radicalised to “undertake armed violence”.

Singapore: Singapore said on Tuesday that its security agencies have arrested one Bangladeshi man, who was plotting attacks against Hindus in his own country and planning to fight in Kashmir, after they investigated the suspicious activities of 37 people as part of the heightened security measures in the city-state following recent terror attacks in Europe.

In a statement, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that counter-terrorism investigations into the suspicious activities of 37 people in Singapore have been carried out after most of them posted on social media, inciting violence or stoking community unrest in the aftermath of the terror attacks in France.

Of the 37 people, 14 are Singaporeans and 23 foreigners, mostly Bangladeshis, it said.

“The 14 Singaporeans comprise 10 males and four females, and are aged between 19 and 62 years old. Most of them had, in response to the recent terror attacks in France, made social media postings which incited violence or stoked communal unrest,” the ministry said.

As for the 23 foreigners, 16 of them, including 15 Bangladeshis and one Malaysian have been repatriated, it said.

Seven foreigners are still under investigation, it added.

One Bangladeshi man under investigation identified as 26-year-old Ahmed Faysal – has been arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA) following investigations into “terrorism-related activities”, the ministry said.

He even bought foldable knives, which he claimed he would use for attacks against Hindus in Bangladesh, it said, adding that he was also willing to travel to Kashmir to fight against “perceived enemies of Islam”.

Preliminary investigations by the Internal Security Department (ISD) showed that Faysal was radicalised and harboured the intention to “undertake armed violence in support of his religion”, the Channel News Asia reported, citing the statement issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

Faysal had been working as a construction worker in Singapore since early 2017, and became radicalised in 2018 after “imbibing online propaganda on ISIS”, the statement said. He was arrested on November 2.

“He was attracted to ISIS’ goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate in Syria and wanted to travel there to fight alongside ISIS against the Syrian government. He believed that he would be a martyr if he died while doing so,” it said.

In mid-2019, Faysal shifted his allegiance to Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), another militant group fighting to establish an Islamic caliphate in Syria.

“He donated funds to a Syria-based organisation on the understanding that his donations would benefit the HTS’ cause in Syria,” the ministry said. “Faysal also actively shared propaganda promoting armed violence on social media accounts created under fictitious names.”

Apart from ISIS and the HTS, Faysal also expressed support for other terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab, the statement said.

To prepare himself for an armed attack, Faysal watched firearms-related videos online.

While Faysal is part of the 37, the ministry said he is not linked to the incidents in France.

“While a handful of these individuals had commented on the same discussion threads on social media, the majority of the cases are not connected to each other,” said the ministry.

There is no indication that any of them were planning attacks or protests in Singapore, it added.

The Singapore Police Force (SPF) and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) have also enhanced their security measures and patrols.

Attacks such as those in Saudi Arabia and Austria also signal a threat against French or Western interests, the ministry said. A “palpable anti-France climate” has developed in several countries, with large protests, calls for boycotts and an increase in terrorist rhetoric online.

“In view of the deteriorating security situation, the Singapore Home Team has been on heightened security alert since early September and had also stepped up its security measures to pre-empt copycat attacks in Singapore,” the ministry said.

Speaking at the 16th Religious Rehabilitation Group Seminar held at Khadijah Mosque on Tuesday, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said the “shape and nature” of the terrorism threat has changed since last year.

While the Islamic State has lost much of its physical territory in several countries and had key leaders killed, they are now a covert network, he noted.

“Its propaganda on social media continues to radicalise and inspire attacks around the world, including here in Southeast Asia,” the minister was quoted as saying by the channel.

Counter-terrorism efforts in the region have reduced the number of attacks, but the terrorists are adapting, he said. Attacks in France and Austria also highlight that the threat of terrorism remains, he added.

The ISD has “ramped up” counter-terrorism investigations into suspicious activity, individuals who are suspected of being radicalised as well as individuals whose conduct could “threaten Singapore’s communal harmony”, said the ministry.

The Singaporeans and foreigners who have been investigated had attracted security attention for suspected radical inclinations, or for making comments which incite violence, or stoked communal unrest”, it added.

(PTI)

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Attack on Non-Muslim Cemetery in Jeddah

In a statement issued through its official channel on Telegram, the group said that its “soldiers” had managed to hide a homemade bomb in the cemetery on Wednesday.

Cairo: Islamic State claimed responsibility on Thursday for an attack on a non-Muslim cemetery in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah which wounded several people, although it did not provide any evidence to back up its claim.

In a statement issued through its official channel on Telegram, the group said that its “soldiers” had managed to hide a homemade bomb in the cemetery on Wednesday that then exploded after several “consuls of crusading countries” gathered there.

The explosion, which occurred during a World War One remembrance ceremony involving foreign embassies, was the second security incident to take place in Jeddah in the last couple of weeks, and the first attack with explosives in years to attempt to hit foreigners in the conservative kingdom.

In a second statement, the Islamic State said they were primarily targeting the French consul general, who attended the ceremony, over what it said was France’s insistence on publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

France’s government has defended the right to publish the cartoons, which are considered blasphemous by Muslims.

On Oct. 18, an Islamic State spokesman called on the militant group’s supporters to target Westerners, oil pipelines and economic infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.

Earlier on Thursday, unidentified assailants sprayed the Saudi embassy in the Netherlands with gunfire before dawn. No one was hurt in the incident.

Late last month, a knife-wielding Saudi man was arrested after attacking and wounding a security guard at the French consulate in Jeddah.

That incident followed the beheading near Paris of a French teacher by a man of Chechen origin who had said he wanted to punish the teacher for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet during a civics lesson.

French President Emmanuel Macron called the teacher, Samuel Paty, a hero, and he pledged to fight “Islamist separatism”, saying it was threatening to take over some Muslim communities in France.

Nice Attack Points to Continued Tunisian Struggle With Jihadists

The man who beheaded an elderly woman and killed two others in a church in the French Riviera city was thought to be a 21-year-old Tunisian who recently entered France via Italy.

Tunis: Though French police believe the attacker who killed three people in Nice on Thursday is a Tunisian, the North African democracy has made big strides in tackling the jihadist threat in recent years.

A French police source told Reuters the man who beheaded an elderly woman and killed two others in a church in the French Riviera city was thought to be a 21-year-old Tunisian who recently entered France via Italy.

Five years after militant Islamists killed scores of tourists in two mass shootings in Tunisia, police in the North African state have grown better at disrupting plots and responding quickly when attacks take place, diplomats say.

However, a steady series of smaller attacks has shown that the threat remains.

Tunisians made up one of the largest contingents of foreign fighters for Islamic State, and though many died in wars in Syria and Iraq, some returned home and were imprisoned.

An Al-Qaeda group is meanwhile entrenched in a hilly, inaccessible part of the border region between Tunisia and Algeria but has proven unable to stage attacks beyond that area.

The last major attack in Nice was also carried out by a Tunisian man who had emigrated to France in 2005 before driving a truck into a Bastille Day crowd in 2016, killing 86 people.

Tunisia’s Foreign Ministry condemned the latest Nice attack and a branch of the judiciary said it has opened an investigation into the suspect.

Though the 2011 revolution brought Tunisia democracy and freedom of expression, it did not translate into an improvement in living standards or economic opportunity, and ever more young people have sought to emigrate.

In September, Italy said the number of migrants arriving over the past year in boats across the Mediterranean – often to the small island of Lampedusa – had risen by half thanks in part to Tunisia’s economic woes.

Lampedusa is only 130 km (80 miles) from the Tunisian coast and young Tunisians living in port towns have told Reuters of a constant temptation to board the ever-present boats departing at night and seek their fortunes in prosperous Europe.

(Reuters)

Three Months After Kerala Gold Smuggling Incident, NIA Struggles to Establish ‘Terror’ Link

Some media reports said the Islamic State was involved in the gold smuggling, but the NIA has not succeeded in providing any evidence.

Kozhikode: When the National Investigation Agency (NIA) began its probe into the infamous gold smuggling incident in Kerala in July, both the NIA and a section of the media argued that the incident was linked to ‘terrorism’. However, three months after the NIA began its probe, the way the case is being viewed has changed dramatically. It has become a ‘politically sensitive’ case from a ‘terror linked’ one.

While beginning the probe, the NIA had said that the case “amounts to a terrorist act as stated in section 15 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967”. The NIA statement further added that, “… as the initial enquiries have revealed that the proceeds of smuggled gold could be used for financing of terrorism in India, NIA has taken up the investigation of the case”.

The central agency also invoked Sections 16 (punishment for terrorist activities), 17 (funding terrorist activities), and 18 (conspiracy for terrorist activities) of the UAPA in the case.

However, the NIA investigators recently had a tough time at the trial court, which has sought clarification from the agency on the terror charges it invoked in the case. The NIA investigators have so far not succeeded in proving their claim that the case is related to terrorism.

Now, according to reports, the NIA seems to be changing its arguments on the ‘terror link’ in the case. The NIA argues that gold smuggling itself is a terrorist activity, as it could destabilise the country’s economic security. This is a significant shift from its earlier argument that the smuggled gold was intended to finance terrorism in the country. However, the NIA’s latest argument is also being challenged by some of the accused, who question the lack of the same ‘terror’ allegation in other similar smuggling cases. “After this case was detected in July, around 50kg of gold was seized by the Customs from various airports in Kerala alone. Has NIA registered an FIR in any of those smuggling incidents?” asked a lawyer of a key accused.

Also read: How the Modi Government Has Used – and Dropped – the ‘Terrorism’ Bogey

There are also doubts on whether the NIA was under pressure to portray this particular case as a case of terrorism from the very beginning. At the initial stage of the probe, some reports had said that the NIA had to invoke the UAPA and terror charges in this case because the agency usually doesn’t probe smuggling cases. “Given the oddity of a smuggling case being handed over to India’s premier counter terror agency, the NIA has also taken pains to justify why it is proving the matter,” the Indian Express had reported.

Agencies more directly linked to financial crimes, like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Customs Department, are already probing the case.

Probe with political purpose?

Even though gold smuggling and its seizure was not rare in the state, the latest incident became particularly controversial for several reasons, such as involvement of a foreign diplomatic mission and the alleged complicity of top state government officials in the crime. Senior IAS officer M. Sivasankar, who was principal secretary of the chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, was removed from his post after he faced serious allegations in connection with the case.

However, the NIA probe is also creating political controversies in the state. The state government faced criticism from the opposition parties after the NIA questioned K.T. Jaleel, the state minister for higher education and minority welfare. However, when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) also took over another case in the state, the ruling CPI(M) broke its silence and criticised the BJP for “misusing” the central investigation agencies for political gains. Recently, the CPI(M)’s Kerala state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said that his party “will resist any move by BJP to intervene in Kerala politics using central agencies”.

The allegations raised by the state’s ruling party are serious in nature, particularly given the recent controversies around the actions of the NIA and other central agencies. Kerala remains an impossible task for BJP even after it made inroads to several new states, including the left bastion of Tripura.

With the BJP is being accused of misusing the central investigation agencies for its political gains, there is a growing concern, both within and outside the ruling CPI(M) that the central agencies may be also used to target the state government and help the BJP.

Issues with media coverage

Not only the NIA, a section of news media in the state also contributed to portraying the gold smuggling incident as a terror-linked one.

In Kerala, just like elsewhere in the country, the media debates on the ‘threat’ of Islamic terrorism continue to be problematic, because they are hardly supported by concrete evidence. In Kerala, such media narrative ostensibly suggests that the state is an Islamic terror hub with the help of foreign funding.

For example, in the gold smuggling case, Malayalam Manorama, a leading news organisation in the state, published a report saying that “the intelligence got the information that a terror group called Islamic State is involved in the smugglings to Kerala”. The report further said, “the probe being carried out by the National Investigation Agency (NIA)…is mainly looking at the ‘extremist’ connection of the smuggling”. However, three months after the NIA began its probe and arrests and questioning of several persons, no such connection has emerged.

Also read: Explainer: Here’s How Handing Over UAPA Cases to NIA Affects the Federal System

Kerala witnesses similar media coverage on ‘Islamic terrorism’ with regular intervals. Recently, there was a flood of such reports after the NIA arrested three migrant workers from the state, along with six others in Bengal, on terror charges.

Soon after the arrests, human rights groups, minority organisations, individual researchers and journalists raised questions on the NIA’s version of the arrests.

While a leading human rights group in Bengal alleged that “the NIA could be acting in the political interests of the BJP”, a Muslim youth organisation in Kerala warned the media against “blindly believing NIA versions”. A joint fact-finding team of human rights groups later revealed several issues related to the arrests, including “false media propaganda”.

However, several news reports published in Kerala after the arrests blindly supported the official version. One such report declared that “presence of Al-Qaeda is growing in the state”. Interestingly, there was no follow-up report on this “growing Al-Qaeda presence” in the state.

There are apprehensions that such baseless fear mongering and ‘othering’ of Muslims, and promotion of Islamophobia in different forms, could eventually help the BJP making electoral gains in the state.

A very likely outcome of the ongoing gold smuggling case is it becoming yet another example of how baseless terror allegations are being raised by investigative agencies and sections of media in certain cases. This trend and such allegations have ruined several innocent lives in the recent past, as described in here and here.

Muhammed Sabith is an independent journalist based in Kozhikode, Kerala. He can be reached at sabith.muhemmad@gmail.com.

Kangana Ranaut: Karnataka Court Directs Police To Register FIR for ‘Anti-Farmer’ Tweet

Based on a complaint by a lawyer L. Ramesh Naik, the Judicial Magistrate First Class court directed the inspector of Kyathasandra police station to register an FIR against the actress.

Bengaluru: A court in Tumakuru district of Karnataka on Friday directed the police to register an FIR against actor Kangana Ranaut on her recent tweet allegedly targeting farmers protesting the farm laws.

Based on a complaint by a lawyer L. Ramesh Naik, the Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court directed the inspector of Kyathasandra police station to register an FIR against the actress.

The court said the complainant had filed an application under section 156(3) (Any Magistrate empowered under section 190 may order an investigation) of the CrPC for investigation.

“The office is hereby directed to issue intimation to the circle police inspector of Kyathasandra police station along with (a) photostat copy of the complaint for the report,” it added.

Naik, who hails from Kyathasandra, told PTI that in connection with his criminal case against the actress, the court had directed the jurisdictional police station to register an FIR and inquire.

The actress had tweeted on September 21, 2020, from her Twitter handle @KanganaTeam: “People who spread misinformation and rumours about CAA that caused riots are the same people who are now spreading misinformation about Farmer’s bill and causing terror in the nation, they are terrorists. You very well know what I said but simply like to spread misinformation.”

Naik said this tweet had hurt him and prompted him to file a case against Ranaut.