– Mohammed Atherulla Shariff
Six years after 17 Muslim men and two minors were accused of raising Pakistan Zindabad slogans and celebrating Pakistani cricket victory, the Madhya Pradesh court finds police case to be false.
The AltNews cofounder Mohammed Zubair has questioned on the social media platform X that a lot of news anchors, including Manak Gupta, Rubika Liyaquat, Sudheer Chaudhry, Amish Devgan, did multiple debates; will they do it now after the charges are proven to be false 76 months after witch hunts?
The court has found the case of June 2017 was fabricated after the Hindu complainant and government witnesses said the police forced them to make false statements. Apart from the lies that upended their lives, the men accused have alleged that they were beaten and verbally abused in police custody. One accused, father of two, broken by the ordeal, killed himself in 2019.
The residents of Mohad village in Madhya Pradesh, 30 km south of the state capital, Bhopal, no longer watch cricket matches between India and Pakistan because they are still traumatised by the arrest and trial of 17 Muslim men and two minors accused of cheering for Pakistan.
After India lost the Champion Trophy final at the Oval Stadium in London on 18 June 2017, a rumour spread about the villagers raising slogans supporting Pakistan, distributing sweets and burning celebratory crackers. The accused were booked for sedition and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code, 1860. When the police found it impossible to make a case, they dropped sedition and added promoting enmity between different groups. They persisted with the case even though the Hindu complainant was publicly saying that he made no such allegations against the Muslim men from his village.
“Besides, the police also failed to provide evidence to prosecute them under Section 153-A of the IPC (promoting enmity between different groups). Thus, the court reached the verdict that all accused were exculpated.”
While the media widely covered the incident in June 2017, the October judgment acquitting them went unreported.
“We just presented our side before the court,” Shoeb Ahmad, the defence lawyer, said. “The complainant and eyewitness testimony did the rest. Although they were pressured to testify against them, they stood with the truth.”
However, the judgment did not hold the MP police accountable for registering and prosecuting a false case.
Masood Ahmed Khan, secretary of the Coordination Committee for Indian Muslims in MP, said that the attitude of the police in MP towards Muslims and tribals in the state had always been “unconstitutional” and there was little the courts had done to change it.
“In the case of Mohad village, the court should have taken stern action against the police,” said Khan. “Not only should the police but also lawyers and media persons be held accountable for their misdeeds.”
