June 10 Ranchi police firing: ‘Want to bring facts on record’: Wife of injured protester files interlocutory plea

Stating that the authorities were “hostile” to the victims of June 10 police firing in Ranchi, Afreen Perween, wife of Mohammad Nadeem Alam who is under treatment for bullet wounds at a Gurgaon hospital, has filed an interlocutory application (IA) with regard to a Public Interest Litigation in the Jharkhand High Court, seeking to bring some “material facts” before the court. A protest was organised in Ranchi on June 10 following former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s remarks against the Prophet, which turned violent.

Perween, through her lawyer Shadab Ansari, filed the IA seeking to bring a video related to the violence on record. “…the video shows stone-pelting but after some time police was able to control the protesters…then a crowd gathered near Hanuman Mandir and started raising ‘Jai Shree Ram’ slogans and thereafter both sides resorted to stone-pelting. Police allowed the other side to gather near the temple which led the situation to deteriorate…police started firing at the protesters without warning or using other crowd-controlling means,” she said in the application.

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The police also fired above the waist, leading to the death of two people and that the police acted in a “partisan manner”, she claimed.

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Ansari said: “The Interlocutory application has been filed and is in the court records. It will be discussed at the next date of hearing, most likely coming Friday, and then we will know whether our IA will be entertained or not.”

The PIL was filed in the court, seeking an NIA investigation into the June 10 incident.

The state had filed five FIRs at two Ranchi police stations, naming 22 Muslim men for the violence, and five Hindu men for assembling near the temple in violation of the Section 144 (CrPC) that was in force. A teenager Mudassir (15), and one Sahil (21) had died of bullet injuries. Eight others, including a policeman, too, had sustained bullet injuries and are currently being treated at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi. The FIR states that the “miscreants” had “planned to attack the temple to instigate riots on religious lines”, and also “tried to kill police personnel”.