National Commission for Minorities chief Rizvi will write to Rajasthan government on the incident, says he’ll also mention murders of Pehlu Khan and Umar Mohammad.
New Delhi: A day after the video of a migrant worker being brutally hacked with a pickaxe went viral, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has addressed the issue. Speaking exclusively to ThePrint, Naqvi said the incident is not one of ‘love jihad’, as had earlier been touted.
However, the Minister refused to comment further, saying law and order is a state subject, and the matter will be addressed by the Rajasthan government.
In the gut-wrenching video, 45-year-old Mohammad Afrazul is seen screaming in pain while the accused, Shambhu Lal first hacks him and then sets him on fire. Lal’s 14-year-old nephew purportedly recorded the entire incident on video. “This is what will happen to you if you do ‘love jihad’ in our country,” the accused is heard saying in the video.
In the wake of this horrific incident, National Commission for Minorities chairperson Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi said he would be writing a letter to the Rajasthan government, condemning the incident and urging it to ensure that such attacks do not take place in the future.
Rizvi, who was previously in the BJP Minority Morcha, said that the commission has taken cognisance of the “horrible” incident, and would send an advisory to the Rajasthan government in a few days. The letter, Rizvi told ThePrint, would refer to previous such communal attacks in the state, including the murders of Pehlu Khan and Umar Mohammad by alleged gau rakshaks.
While he said that the incident does not appear to be one of ‘love jihad’, he did admit that the term has become a “mudda” (issue) on which those from the Muslim community are often attacked. However, some cases of ‘love jihad’ are true, Rizvi said.
The commission would have urged the Rajasthan government to take action had it not done so already. However, since the accused, Shambhu Lal, has already been arrested and an inquiry initiated, the commission can only urge the government to ensure that the communal atmosphere in the state is checked.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had sidestepped a question on the barbaric murder of Afrazul at a press conference in Kolkata Thursday. “Now this is a political question…Thank you very much,” Singh said when asked to comment on the incident.
There is no compelling need for the Centre to comment on the issue, since the state has already taken action, Rizvi said in defence of the central government’s silence on the issue. “Had the state government not taken action, the Centre would have commented,” he said.