Gurugram: It has been around five days since Haryana Police arrested Congress legislator Mamman Khan in connection with the communal violence in Nuh that occurred at the end of July, but the party high command is yet to comment on it.
While the Ferozepur Jhirka MLA has been named in four more related cases since, the arrest didn’t find a mention at the party’s two-day Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting in Hyderabad last weekend, going by the resolutions passed during the meet as mentioned in media reports.
All that came from the Congress by way of support was a joint statement Sunday from former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan, which termed Khan’s arrest as a “political witch-hunt”.
Khan, a Meo leader, was arrested on 14 September in connection with an FIR registered at Nagina police station of Haryana’s Nuh district on 1 August over the 31 July violence.
While his name was not mentioned in the FIR, police summoned Khan to appear before the Nagina police on 31 August as he “may have some information/documents relating to the case”.
According to the notice issued to Khan on 25 August, the FIR was registered under Sections 148 (rioting armed with deadly weapons), 149 (unlawful assembly), 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 379-A (theft), 436 (mischief by explosive substance), and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
ThePrint has accessed the notice.
On 14 September, Khan was remanded to police custody for two days. When they produced him before court, the police said he was named in three FIRs and the court gave a further police remand of two days. On 18 September, the police told the court that yet another FIR has been lodged against Khan, leading to further extension of his remand till 19 September. On 19 September, Khan was sent to 14-day judicial custody.
Congress MLA from Nuh, Aftab Ahmad has claimed that Khan was falsely implicated by the government to cover up its own failures.
“I had brought to the notice of the Additional SP (since the SP was on leave then) that the atmosphere is charged ahead of the Braj Mandal Jalabhishek Yatra because of social media posts from both sides, but the government took no preventive measures. There was poor deployment of police and even those on duty were directionless because the SP, as well as the deputy commissioner, were on leave that day,” he said.
Ahmad also alleged that his party wanted to discuss Nuh violence during the monsoon session of the state assembly (25-29 August) and had even moved an adjournment motion on this issue. But the government did not take up the motion for discussion, he added.
Meanwhile, speaking to ThePrint Sunday, Hooda said, “I have termed his arrest as a political witch-hunt and have demanded an inquiry under a sitting judge of the high court in my statement…When CM Manohar Lal Khattar has said that there is a deep-rooted conspiracy in Nuh violence, it becomes all the more necessary to order a judicial inquiry into the matter.”
Mahabir Jaglan, a political analyst and a retired professor of Geography from Kurukshetra University, said the Congress’s response on Nuh also was tepid.
“It was only when the khap panchayats and farmer bodies came out in the open and blamed Monu Manesar, Bittu Bajrangi and right-wing organisations for vitiating the atmosphere in Mewat that culminated in Nuh violence that the Congress mustered some courage to speak on it,” he said to ThePrint.
“When the BJP has set a tone for Hindu politics, the Congress is also playing its cards cautiously,” he said, adding that “the party should spell out its stand clearly on the Nuh issue, and if the party is convinced that Mamman Khan didn’t do any wrong, it should back him.”
Meanwhile, Deepak Babaria, the AICC in-charge for the party in Haryana, claimed that the Congress has been opposing its MLA’s arrest on every forum. When ThePrint connected with him Tuesday via phone, he said that both Udai Bhan and Hooda had demanded a probe under a sitting judge of the high court.
He added that though he was not the right person to speak about the proceedings of the CWC, he knew that the matter was discussed there too.
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Clamour for clarity
Meanwhile, Dr Meraj Hussain, a former member of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), posted on X on 16 September that “Mamman Khan is a people’s representative and not an infamous criminal like Monu Manesar. If speech is the basis for his arrest, then how come people like Anurag Thakur and Kapil Mishra are roaming free.”
मम्मन ख़ान जनप्रतिनिधि है, मोनू मनेसर जैसे कोई कुख्यात अपराधी नहीं।अगर स्पीच ही आधार है गिरफ़्तारी का तो अनुराग ठाकुर से लेकर कपिल मिश्रा तक खुले क्यों घूम रहे है? @TheReportHindi #MammanKhan pic.twitter.com/lTI6V5NWqS
— Dr.Meraj Hussain (@drmerajhusain) September 16, 2023
Ashok Tanwar, a former member of Parliament and state Congress president, who now heads the campaign committee of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Haryana, also said the Congress should make its stance on Khan clear.
“When the Congress is not in a position to defend its own MLA how can one expect them to defend the people?” Tanwar asked, adding that such an approach “gives the BJP-JJP government a free hand to use tyrannical means to suppress opposing voices”.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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