‘Crowd shouting slogans accompanied officials… unease spread’: Months after Sambhal violence, what a fact-finding committee report says

The 114-page report was released on Tuesday by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR). Titled ‘Sambhal: Anatomy of an Engineered Crisis – Myth, Violence, and the Weaponisation of Faith in a Muslim-majority city’, it claimed that “state officials are doing nothing to assuage fears” of Muslims.

Sambhal District Magistrate, Dr Rajender Pensiya, called the report a farce. Speaking to The Indian Express, Pensiya said a report can say anything. “People became violent and started pelting stones at the police and the administration. The entire country heard the announcement when we were requesting them to go back,” he said.

The APCR team comprised lawyers and researchers. The report highlighted two major issues — the process of the survey and what happened after it.

“On November 19, (advocate) Hari Shankar Jain and son Vishnu Shankar Jain, alongside Mahant Rishiraj Giri, priest of the Kela Devi Mandir, filed a petition in the district court in the morning requesting an immediate survey of the mosque, claiming it was actually a temple,” said the report.

It said the government’s advocate in this case did not raise any objections and an “ex parte judgment” was passed the same afternoon, without hearing the mosque’s representatives, allowing the survey to proceed within hours.

“Suspicion and unease spread among Muslim residents, intensified by the lack of standard precautionary protocols…,” it claimed.

The report further alleged that a second survey was conducted on November 24, during which a slogan-shouting crowd accompanied officials. “What intensified the large-scale protest of the people was actions such as the draining of the mosque’s ablution tank that led to suspicions of illegal excavation being carried out in the mosque,” alleged the APCR report.

This triggered violent clashes.

The report further said, “Police responded to the crowd of protesting Muslims with lathi charges, tear gas, and gunfire. Five Muslim men were killed, dozens were injured, and over 85 were arrested. Eyewitness testimonies and videos contradict the official narrative that the crowd was violent…”

The report further claimed in the weeks following the clash, “police conducted house-to-house raids in Muslim neighbourhoods, filed dubious FIRs, and targeted political figures and activists”.

As per the report, a few weeks after the violence, the Sambhal administration launched an anti-encroachment drive on December 14, specifically targeting areas like Sarai Tarin Main Market, Hindupura Kheda, Deepa Sarai, Khaggu Sarai, including areas near the residences of Samajwadi Party MP Zia Ur Rehman Barq, MLA Iqbal Mehmood, and SP leaders Aqeelur Rehman Khan and Firoz Khan that were affected by the unrest.

The District Magistrate, however, said the actions were taken based on revenue records. “If it belongs to the government and has been illegally encroached by people, we need to act on it,” he said.

DM Pensiya also said that there was no correlation between the violence and the encroachment drive in the district. “Encroachment drives are a regular process of any administration, and it has nothing to do with the violence. The drive against the electricity theft had also begun by September 1,” he said.

“As far as the rumour of digging inside the mosque premises is concerned, if there was any digging, the soil would have been placed outside,” he said, adding that the ablution tank was emptied to check its depth.

So far, over 80 people, including three women, have been arrested.

Last month, police filed a chargesheet against MP Barq and 22 others in connection with the case, officials had said. The police had also said that the investigation found no involvement of Sohail Iqbal in inciting the violence at the mosque, though he was present at the spot. Iqbal is the son of the local Samajwadi Party MLA, Iqbal Mehmood.