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Hans India
3 days ago
- Politics
- Hans India
SP, Cong, AAP slam UP govt over Balrampur gang-rape
Lucknow: Opposition parties on Wednesday lashed out at the Uttar Pradesh government over the alleged rape of a 21-year-old mentally challenged deaf-mute woman in Balrampur district, terming it a grim reflection of the state's law and order situation. Their attack on the government came even as the Balrampur police arrested two suspects following an encounter in the early hours of Wednesday, two days after the alleged incident. Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, in a post on X, called the crime 'extremely heinous' and questioned the Adityanath-led government's claims on maintaining law and order. 'Will those making such claims be able to look the public in the eye and say something in this matter?' he asked. He demanded every possible relief, assistance, and medical care for the survivour, and said the culprits should be given the strictest punishment without any 'fake encounter show'. The Uttar Pradesh Congress, in a post on X, alleged that the accused abandoned the survivor in an unconscious state barely 20 metres from a police outpost after the gangrape. 'In CCTV footage from outside the SP's residence, it is clearly visible that the survivor was running to save herself while 5''6 men on bikes were chasing her,' it claimed. 'Yogi ji, this is the reality of your women's safety claims. If daughters are not safe near police stations and the SP's residence, imagine the reality in the rest of the state.' The party accused the government of being 'shameless and incompetent' and said criminals were acting with impunity. In the harrowing 16-second CCTV footage, the woman, seemingly barefoot, was seen running on a dimly lit deserted road and men chasing her on motorcycles. The Aam Aadmi Party also criticised the state administration, alleging that the incident shows that 'daughters are not safe in Yogi ji's rule.'
Scroll.in
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Harsh Mander: The assault of four Muslims and the two sides of India's meat economy
At the end of another harrowing journey of the Karwan e Mohabbat to meet four men lynched by a mob in Aligarh on May 24, I return with only one great solace. That they are alive. Savagely injured, traumatised, terrified. But alive. Except for this outcome, their story is the same as ones I have heard too many times during at least a hundred journeys of the Karwan e Mohabbat to the homes of people lynched. The account of lynching that recurs in a loop is of young men meting out numbing violence on petrified unarmed men. Of their ferocity powered by the visceral hate of those who lead the land. Of cynical extortion. Of a complicit police force. Of the acquiescing onlooker. The four lynched men – Aqil, Arbaaz, Aqeel and Nadeem – were all in their 30s or early 40s. They were of the Qureshi clan, the caste of Indian Muslims whose traditional occupation for centuries has been the slaughter of animals for meat. The killing of cows is of course banned by law, but buffalo meat is licit in Uttar Pradesh. Before the Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party government came to power, butchers were licenced to slaughter buffaloes in their abattoirs. This was an honest trade with no attendant dangers. But it was abruptly halted by the Adityanath government which refused to grant licences to the small slaughter-houses where animals had been lawfully butchered for many generations. This decision overturned the lives of tens of thousands of families in the meat business. The family of Aqil, Arbaaz and Nadeem was one of them. It is mostly big beef factories that this government has licenced to slaughter buffaloes. During his first bid for national power in 2014, Narendra Modi accused the Congress-led government of abandoning the green and white revolutions to expand farm and milk produce and instead favouring what he called the ' pink revolution ' or encouraging the slaughter of animals for their meat. The irony is that despite the hardening of laws prohibiting cow slaughter and a massive rise in cow vigilantism, in the 11 years of Modi's leadership of the country Indian beef exports have steadily grown. Many of India's largest beef exporting companies are owned by Hindus and some even by Jains. Despite the hateful discourse that surrounds this trade, this is by no means a Muslim monopoly. The further irony is that when the names of contributors to the BJP through electoral bonds were revealed, many beef export companies figured in the list. For the family of Aqil, Arbaaz and Nadeem, the cancellation of licenses of their slaughter house posed a crisis of survival. Butchery was the only profession they knew. But fortunately, they still had licences to sell meat. The family owns seven meat shops in Aligarh. They would buy legal buffalo meat from a beef factory in Atrauli, about 40 kilometres from Aligarh. Each time they would buy around 900 kg of buffalo beef from the factory, pack this into a pick-up van and drive past a checkpoint on to the highway to Aligarh. The profit margins were small, they told us. They would buy the meat for Rs 230 a kilo, and sell it for Rs 260. The volume of sale, from seven meat retail shops, ensured a modest income for the extended family. For Aqeel, the 35-year-old driver from a working-class family, livelihood options were even fewer. He would hire a pick-up van and transport a variety of goods. Among these was also, from time to time, the dangerous cargo of meat. With the proliferation of violent 'cow protection' groups – claiming allegiance with the Bajrang Dal, and having close links with the police, the local administration and the ruling BJP – the 40-kilometre journey from Atrauli to Aligarh was always fraught. However, there was no way to avoid it. The militant groups often extorted money from the meat transporters. The men who were lynched spoke of being waylaid some months earlier by a group of Bajrang Dal men who demanded their exaction money. When they refused, the Bajrang Dal members took them to the police station. There the police allegedly brokered a deal of Rs 2.9 lakh, and retained a portion of this for themselves. I have no way of confirming the veracity of this claim. On the hot summer morning of May 24, the three men in the meat trade and the driver drove out of the beef factory in Atrauli at 8 am with their usual load of 900 kg of buffalo meat. Hum sirf ek number ka kaam karte hain (we only do legal work), they kept repeating when we met the badly injured men in the hospital. Their paper work was complete, including the bills of purchase and the licence of the veterinary doctor that the meat was buffalo meat. Some four kilometres into the highway, eight men on four motorcycles blocked their way and forced them to park the pick-up van on the side of the road. 'These were the usual Bajrang Dal men,' they told me. I asked how they were sure that they were from the Bajrang Dal. The saffron scarves, or gamchas, that they wrapped around their necks was the marker, they said. It is like a uniform. The meat transporters showed the young men all their papers, pleading that the meat was not of a slaughtered cow, and everything complied with the law. The men who had blocked their path sneered and tore up the papers. The men in the pick-up begged to be allowed to continue their travel, but the vigilantes said other 'brothers' were on their way. Within a short while, around a dozen more motorcycles converged on the spot, the crowd of young men swelling ominously. They dragged the four men from the van where they were cowering, snatched their mobile phones and money, stripped down many to their underwear and began thrashing them viciously, with iron and wooden rods, bricks and stones. Some minutes later, a police Gypsy jeep arrived. The beleaguered men ran desperately to the vehicle and crawled into it, begging the policemen to protect them. The policemen brushed aside their pleas brusquely, reportedly with communal slurs. After that it was open season for the mob. The crowd of attackers and onlookers continued to inflate. Some onlookers began to record videos, which are widely circulating. It is hard to watch these videos without your stomach lurching. The incessant pitiless beating, the men's desperate screams of pain, their bodies soaked in blood, their begging vainly for mercy. Some men even drove motorcycles over the legs of their quarry. You can spot the police in some of the videos, doing little to restrain the bloodthirsty mob. Chilling also is the fact that not one from the crowd intervenes to help the victims. The lynch mob set aflame the pick-up van with the meat. When the survivors evaluated their financial losses later, it was Rs 13 lakh for the pick-up van and Rs 2 lakh the cost of the meat. The men began to lose consciousness. If matters had followed the course that I have observed in too many cow-lynchings around the country, the next step would have been their bleeding to death. That this did not happen was the result of the intervention of one man. A police officer of conscience. Yes, they do exist. I have worked long enough within the government system to affirm that there are good officials even in the worst of regimes. I will not name this police officer, because we live in such a twisted age that I don't know if he will be rewarded as the hero that he is, or be punished. He arrived, dispersed the mob, rescued the four men and rushed them for medical attention to the nearest district hospital, and from there to the medical college hospital in the Aligarh Muslim University. It is a grim commentary on the times that we occupy that these acts, which should be nothing more significant than the elementary fulfilment of his official duties, glow instead as rare acts of heroism. The families of the injured men we met said that their men would not have lived if the police officer had not intervened on time. They bless him and believe that it was Allah who sent him. Aligarh meat traders assault: FSL report finds the meat being transported was NOT beef Aligarh DIG Prabhakar Chaudhary has confirmed that the meat being transported by the traders who were ambushed and brutally assaulted was NOT beef as against the accusations of members of… — Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) May 27, 2025 Rashid, the driver Aqeel's brother, recalled to us, 'He was unconscious when his wife first saw him. She called us on the phone and told us he was dead. When we saw him, there was not a part of his body that was not injured. Even the region around his eyes. It is the grace of Allah that he is alive. There were so many stitches on his head. They had beaten him with steel rods on his head and legs and back. They had also beaten him with bricks and stones. Their experience in the district hospital was discouraging. Not only was it ill-equipped to deal with this kind of medical emergency. They spoke of a doctor who abused them and declared that since they were inveterate cow-killers, they deserved worse. The university medical college was better. The staff, they said, were diligent and caring. But they seemed to be under pressure, because they kept trying to discharge them while their myriad wounds were still unhealed. Perhaps the authorities did not want their presence in the hospital to speak with the line of political leaders of various opposition parties who lined up to meet the injured men. The public statements of these leaders were damaging and embarrassing for the ruling party. Ramji Lal Suman, Rajya Sabha MP from the Samajwadi Party, for instance declared, 'These people [the attackers] have nothing to do with cow welfare. Several beef companies had paid huge amounts to the BJP in the Electoral Bonds Scheme. Several beef factory owners are Hindu. All this is done to divide society on religious lines and go after the minorities.' Congress MP from Saharanpur Imran Masood said: 'A joke was made of law and order, and they were beaten up. This was tragic, and the way the SHO saved the lives of those men. If he were not there, they wouldn't have survived. But, the way they were beaten up and this behaviour of acting like goons. Is this how the rule of law will be established, that people are beaten and robbed on the road?' The driver Aqeel was the most severely injured of the four and even at the time I write, he still hovers between life and death. His early discharge was the most unfortunate. His family quickly admitted him to a private hospital, where he was in the intensive care unit when we visited. Concerned people are paying the hospital bills. The remaining three men were in the general ward of the medical college. Their bodies still bore raw signs of their brutal lynching. Dozens of stitches on their heads, many broken bones, the flesh still torn from their bodies. As we spoke with them, the injured men were remarkably stoic. Their pain was still visceral, their rage quiet. They wanted justice, they repeated, not revenge. But the police had registered crimes of cow slaughter against them, which fortunately had to be dropped when the laboratory certified the meat was of a buffalo. The police were unwilling to apply the crime of lynching and were slow in arrests. But the greatest dilemma of the victim survivors was about what they would do to feed their families after their wounds healed. They saw no option except to go back to the same work, despite the manifest threats to their lives. They knew no other work. The seized meat is being sent for sampling. Meanwhile, based on the complaint, FIR is being registered against the four people who were brutally assaulted by the mob. — Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) May 24, 2025 Days after my visit to Aligarh, I am both haunted and edified by the words of driver Aqeel's elder brother Rashid. Incidentally, his trade is running a cycle puncture repair shop. This is the stereotype of the Muslim loser that Prime Minister Modi recently purveyed. But Rashid spoke with wisdom, sadness and grace. 'It is because of Allah's mercy and the support of so many good people that our Ateeq is alive,' he said. 'Had people not reacted so quickly, our boy would have died, the police would have claimed the meat was cow meat, the other men would been have thrown into prison and bulldozers would have razed down our homes'. 'We cannot tell you who were those who attacked our boys,' he went on. 'But this is clear, that behind them, backing them are powerful forces. Neither Hindus are bad nor Muslims are bad. It is these Bajrang Dal people who are goondas. The Bajrang Dal should be banned. If anyone among us does wrong, it should be the government, the constitution, the law which should act. If the constitution and law say killing cows is wrong, then it is wrong. Let the wrongdoers be punished. Let the courts even send them to the gallows. Imagine if there was cow meat in the van. Even then the Bajrang Dal goondas had no right to thrash them. They should have simply handed them to the police and let them punish the wrongdoers. What right do these Bajrang Dal people have to take the law into their own hands? If they are going to act in this way, then are we not just throwing away the Constitution? He is mindful of the injustice to his community. 'The big factory owners have the right to slaughter buffaloes, but we do not. Never mind. Yeh bhi sabar kar lenge [this also we will endure]. But we demand justice from the government for the lynching. Think what would happen if we had committed this lynching? We and our families would have been hounded; bulldozers would have demolished our homes. The videos clearly reveal who were the men who attacked our boys. They should be arrested and punished. Why are the police treating the attackers so lightly?' He went on to affirm his love for his country. 'I was born in India. This India belongs to us all, to Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. But now hatred has entered the hearts of every child. No one, of any religion, should be free to cause harm to others. And the media should tell the truth. 'I have only this appeal to Modi Saheb and Yogi Saheb. Our Bharat was of brotherhood and love. Where has that love disappeared? I want back my Bharat, the Bharat that we had before 2014. Bring that back.' I am grateful for support from Zayed Mansoor Khan, Sumit Gupta and Imaad ul Hasan Harsh Mander, justice and peace worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people's campaign to counter hate violence with love and solidarity. He teaches at FAU University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Heidelberg University, Germany; Vrije University, Amsterdam; and IIM, Ahmedabad.
India Today
31-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
1991-batch IPS officer Rajeev Krishna appointed Uttar Pradesh police chief
Senior IPS officer Rajeev Krishna has been appointed as the acting Director General of Police (DGP) of Uttar Pradesh, a government order said on Saturday. Krishna is a 1991-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh present, Krishna has double charge of DG Vigilance and DG Recruitment and Promotion Board. Now, he has been given the responsibility as the acting DGP. He succeeded former DGP Prashant Kumar, who retired on have taken charge (as the new DGP). Further discussions will be held in the press conference," Krishna told reporters. Of the likely names for the top post, Krishna was the front-runner in the race for DGP. The reason was when the government's credibility was questioned due to the UP Police Constable recruitment exam being cancelled after a paper leak last year, the Uttar Pradesh Police Recruitment Board conducted the exam successfully under Krishna's then DG of the recruitment board, Renuka Mishra, was removed as a repercussion of the paper Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav attacked the Yogi Adityanath-led government for not being able to appoint a permanent DGP instead of an acting one."UP gets another acting DGP! Today. While leaving, he (Prashant Kumar) must be thinking about what he got and who kept proving every wrong to be right. If he had been loyal to the Constitution and the law instead of the person, he would at least have got respect in his own eyes. "Now it remains to be seen whether the new person is able to free himself from the web that he has woven in the entire state and deliver justice impartially or else he too becomes a victim of politics by getting trapped in the same web," Yadav wrote in Hindi on X. advertisement "Why should the people of UP and the poor law and order situation bear the brunt of the Delhi-Lucknow fight? When the 'double engine' cannot elect an officer together, how will they run the country and the state," he IS IPS OFFICER RAJEEV KRISHNA?Krishna was posted as Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) in Bareilly, Kanpur, and Aligarh after he became an IPS officer in 1991. He served as SP City in Aligarh. As captain, he was SP and SSP in Firozabad, Etawah, Mathura, Fatehgarh, Bulandshahr, Noida, Agra, Lucknow and the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) was formed in Uttar Pradesh, Krishna became the first DIG and led the IG Range, he took over the command of Meerut. In the current Adityanath-led government, Krishna was the ADG Zone of Lucknow for one-and-a-half years and the ADG Zone of Agra for about two-and-a-half August 2023, Krishna was made ADG of Vigilance. When he was promoted to the post of DG in January 2024, the government made him DG Vigilance. But when the paper of the police recruitment exam was leaked in March 2024, he was also given the command of the Police Recruitment and Promotion OF INFLUENTIAL BUREAUCRATIC FIGURESadvertisementKrishna's wife, Meenakshi Singh, is an IRS officer and is currently posted as the Income Tax Commissioner. Rajeshwar Singh, who was a joint director in ED, is currently a BJP MLA from Sarojini Nagar seat of Lucknow. He is Krishna's brother-in-law and his wife Meenakshi Singh's brother-in-law Rajeshwar Singh's wife, Laxmi Singh, is Noida's Police wife's elder sister, Abha Singh, has been in the postal services and has been UP's PMG. She is currently a senior lawyer at the Bombay High Court, while her husband YP Singh is a former IPS officer. IN THIS STORY#Uttar Pradesh
Indian Express
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
A department fit for the gods — till it isn't. Another UP temple story
The Department of Religious Affairs in Uttar Pradesh has grabbed the spotlight after Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said that temples must be protected from 'administrative corruption' and accused the Yogi Adityanath government of 'indirectly taking control (of them) under the garb of better administration'. Akhilesh's comments came after the Adityanath-led BJP government constituted a trust on Tuesday to manage the administration of the Banke Bihari temple as a part of its plans to redevelop the Banke Bihari corridor between Mathura and Vrindavan. 'Through the excuse of management, the BJP and its associates are gradually taking indirect control of prominent temples. Those who have been traditionally managing these temples for centuries with devotion are being stripped of their rights and are being unfairly accused of being incapable or mismanaging temple affairs,' the SP chief said in a post on X. Officially christened 'Dharmarth Karya Vibhag' and mandated to develop religious institutions and temples, the department came into existence on December 19, 1985, under the Vir Bahadur Singh-led Congress government. According to the website of the Department of Religious Affairs, all temples and religious places of the state fall under it, and its objective is to provide basic facilities like route management, accommodation, lighting, drinking water and food to the visiting devotees. The department was seen as 'defunct' and a hub of 'officials sent on punishment posting' till Akhilesh, during his tenure as CM between 2012 and 2017, 'revived' it with announcements like Rs 50,000 for devotees taking up the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and Rs 10,000 for the Sindhu Darshan Yatra. It has further gained prominence since Adityanath assumed power in 2017, and especially after it tied up with the Tourism Department to promote the BJP government's vision of developing Uttar Pradesh into a hub of 'religious tourism'. In 2018, barely a year after coming to power, Adityanath established the 'Braj Teerth Vikas Parishad', headed by retired IPS officer Shailja Kant Mishra, to develop temples and pilgrimage sites of the region. Under Adityanath's direct supervision, over the past five years, the department has set up six more such 'parishads' for Ayodhya Dham, Vindhyavhal Dham in Mirzapur, Shukarteerath in Muzaffarnagar, Chitrakoot Dham, Devipatan Dham in Gonda district and Naimisharanya Dham in Sitapur. While the other 'parishads' are yet to see the light of day, the Braj Teerth Vikas Parishad is fully operational. The Adityanath government had also increased the assistance for pilgrims undertaking the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and Sindhu Darshan Yatra to Rs 1 lakh and Rs 20,000 respectively. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Kashi Vishwanath corridor in Varanasi on February 14, 2022, the Adityanath regime shifted its focus to the Banke Bihari temple in Vrindavan. However, the government's move to use temple funds to acquire five acres for a project similar to the Kashi Vishwanath corridor ran into legal trouble after the temple's sevak (priest) approached the Allahabad High Court against it. The court last year passed an order denying permission to the government to use temple funds for the project. The government then moved the Supreme Court against the High Court order. Earlier this month, the top court gave its go-ahead for the project. The government later passed an ordinance to establish the Shri Banke Bihari Ji Mandir Nyas Trust, which was cleared by Governor Anandiben Patel on Tuesday. According to a senior official, the trust will now be responsible for the development, security and administration of the religious site while the 'Goswamis' will continue with their traditional duties of performing rituals. The temple has sought a review of the Supreme Court order. A BJP leader said that the Banke Bihari corridor would be implemented on the lines of the Kashi Vishwanath project. 'People whose lands are acquired will be adequately compensated like it was done during the Kashi Vishwanath corridor. There will be no issues whatsoever,' the leader said on the condition of anonymity. Incidentally, Akhilesh as CM had cleared a similar proposal by the Department of Religious Affairs to manage the Banke Bihari temple as well as the Vindhyavasini temple. The proposal was scrapped after SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav intervened. 'There are seven other temples in Mathura where management issues have been pending for decades and are currently being managed by administrative or judicial officers,' a senior official told The Indian Express.
