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Journalism of Courage
Nearly a week after tension mounted in two villages of Aligarh district in Uttar Pradesh after some unidentified miscreants wrote slogans of the Prophet on the walls of four temples, the police on Thursday said that they have arrested four persons.
“The four arrested men are Jishant Kumar, Aakash, Dileep Kumar, and Abhishek Saraswat – all residents of Aligarh. We also recovered the spray can from the accused that was used to write the slogans on the walls of the temple,” Senior Superintendent of Police (Aligarh) Neeraj Kumar Jadaun told mediapersons.
One of the accused, who has been identified as Rahul, is absconding, he added.
According to the SSP, the accused were identified and arrested on the basis of CCTV footage, call details, “spelling mistakes” in the slogans, and certain old case records.
“They had written different spellings for the Prophet. They are not educated people. Somewhere they spelt it as Mohmad and Muhmad,” Station House Officer (Lodha) Ankit Kumar told The Indian Express.
According to the police, Jishant Kumar wanted to frame one Mustaqeem, with whom he had an altercation, and the two had filed FIRs against each other. Jishant took the help of his three friends – Aakash, Dileep, and Abhishek – to frame Mustaqeem, they said, adding Rahul, who has a property dispute with Mustaqeem also joined them.
“Their intention was to frame Mustaqeem,” said Jadaun.
On the morning of October 25, the police had received information that religious slogans were written on the walls of four temples at Bhagwanpur and Bulaqigarh villages in the Lodha area of the district. As residents demanded the arrest of the miscreants, police registered an FIR against seven unidentified persons under BNS sections 299 (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) and 351 (criminal intimidation).
Forensic teams of police were involved to scrutinise CCTV footage from the surrounding areas to identify the culprits.
As tension mounted in the area, a heavy deployment of police force was ordered to stop any attempts to disturb communal harmony.
The incident followed violent protests in Bareilly on September 26 over the police action in the “I Love Muhammad” posters row.
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