A passerby who claimed he overheard slogans that he considered “anti-national” from a home in Malvan, a town in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district, even as India played Pakistan for the Champions Trophy in a Dubai stadium Sunday. That’s all it took, apparently, to unleash a set of events that should be deeply embarrassing for a state where a new government has just taken charge after winning a large-hearted mandate, and a society that is proud of its progressive traditions and home to Mumbai, one of India’s most capacious and modern cities. On Sunday, the 15-year-old boy who allegedly raised the slogans, was sent to an observation home, and his parents arrested after a confrontation with neighbours under charges such as promoting enmity between groups on grounds of religion — they have subsequently got bail. On Monday, a motorcycle rally was taken out in Malvan, not to protest against the bizarre detention and arrests, but to demand stricter action against members of the besieged family. On Monday, too, the Malvan Municipal Council demolished the family’s scrap shop, holding up the fig leaf of illegality, and an MLA with a record of stoking communal spectres jumped in with exhortations to “throw out” and exultation over a business that now stood “destroyed”.
What happened in Malvan violates fundamental freedoms, the rule of law, and the constitutional letter and spirit. Nilesh Rane, the Shiv Sena (Shinde) MLA, may be seizing a political opportunity, but there are wider complicities. That a teenager’s slogan should be seen as a threat to the nation, that the police should hasten to file an FIR and make arrests on flimsy charges, and that the municipal body should rush to perpetrate bulldozer injustice, is deeply troubling. This also thumbs a nose at the Supreme Court itself which has laid down pan-India guidelines to prevent this brazen misuse of power and miscarriage of justice. In November last year, the Court framed the guidelines to ensure that due process is followed before properties of citizens are demolished. Violation of the guidelines would be deemed to be “unconstitutional” and amount to contempt of court, it said. Because the selective targeting of homes of accused persons is discriminatory and inflicts collective punishment in irreversible ways.
The India-Pakistan encounter in Dubai, which sparked the dismal sequence of events in Malvan, also leaves behind a memory of another kind. A viral photograph captured a moment that framed the spirit of the game — it showed former Indian captain Virat Kohli bending to tie the shoelaces of Pakistani player Naseem Shah who was at the non-striker’s end. If that Dubai moment was about confidence and grace, Malvan is anything but. It is up to the state, and the court, to correct the course.
