On Thursday, January 6, a video emerged from Kundikala hamlet in the Sarguja district in Chhattisgarh, showing Hindu locals swearing to boycott Muslims. In the video dated January 5, a man was seen leading almost 200 people in an oath banning Muslim sellers, boycotting any commercial transactions with members of the Muslim community, and prohibiting the sale or lease of any land to a Muslim.

According to reports, the action by the miffed Hindus was deliberated by a scuffle that took place between residents of Aara village and Kundikala village on January 1. In what transpired, a Muslim family from the Aara village, which falls in neighbouring Balrampur district, had traveled to Kundikala village on January 1 to celebrate the New Year. On that day, the Muslim visitors allegedly got into a tussle with a local Hindu resident and thrashed him up. The victim alleged that the six Muslim visitors barged into his house and beat him up and two family members, including his niece. 

Subsequently, the victim's family lodged a complaint against the Muslim assaulters. Based on the complaint the Chhattisgarh police arrested six people under sections 147, 294, 323, 506, 452 of the IPC, but all of them got bail from a local court the same day.

The Hindu villagers of Kundikala were enraged by the bias of the police. They accused police of shielding the accused by invoking trivial sections of the IPC in the case instead of the SC/ST Act. As the accused burst firecrackers and celebrated their bail, the miffed Hindus gheraoed the Lundra police station, in Surguja district, Chhattisgarh, on 5 January (Wednesday), claiming that the complaint should have been filed under SC/ST act as the victims were Adivasis. Accusing the police of being biased, the villagers gave the police a 10-day ultimatum, asking them to either take strict action against the accused or be prepared for a bigger protest.

The January 5 video appears to be a fallout of this brawl between residents of the two villages on January 1.

Following the incident, the police appealed to the residents in the area to keep calm. They said that the investigation into the case is ongoing. The FIR filed in this case named Inzamam, Mozid, Seraj, Fazal, and Suhail as the prime accused.

Copy of the FIR filed in the aforementioned case

Chhattisgarh police threaten, intimidate Hindu victims while shielding the Muslim accused

Meanwhile, another video has emerged from the day of the incident where, Dilbagh Singh, in charge of the local police station, was seen harassing a journalist who went to the victim’s village to cover the incident. At around 7.20-minutes into the video shared below, Dilbagh Singh is heard threatening to put the journalist in jail if he didn’t turn off the camera. The entire village protested in unison when the journalist was apprehended and taken away. This compelled the police to retreat. A video of the station in-charge excesses on the journalist had also surfaced online.

The YouTube channel Bharat Samman, which visited Kundikala village in Chhattisgarh to cover the news, also interviewed a girl who is seen in the above video with a bandage on her head. The girl in the video, who appears to be a minor, claimed that she was pulled out of her house, beaten up by the accused who also attempted to drag her into a car.

Police rebuked us and asked us to remain silent: Victim divulges details of Chhattisgarh police apathy

A woman from the victim's family told the channel: “I was inside the house when a heard my children weeping. Before I could know, the assailants barged into my house and started beating us up. The assaulters attacked whoever tried to intervene and save us. An attempt was also made to molest my daughter. Around 50 assailants had gathered with big sticks and lathis. Soon after, the cops arrived. When we sought to express our distress to the authorities, we were rebuked and asked to remain silent,” said the distressed mother, adding that when she opposed and told the cops that she would not keep quiet as her daughter had been assaulted, the cops asked her to sit in the police van and took them away.

When the reporter asked the mother whether they told the police about the molestation attempt, the mother said meekly: “We were so terrified that we couldn’t tell the cops anything.”

Further describing what transpired on January 5, the minor girl’s uncle told the reporter that they were attacked all of a sudden. The assaulters kicked our door and barged in. I was in the house that day. They grabbed my niece’s hand and started pulling her towards themselves. They abused and hit me also, said the victim’s uncle.

They openly threatened to kill all the Hindus and burn down the entire village: Victim family laments

He added that the main accused Ilyas, who is a Block Development Council (BDC) member, asked his accomplice to take out their respective weapons and kill all of them. “They hurled filthy abuses at us. The accused also burst firecrackers and celebrated in our village after getting bail. They openly threatened to kill all the Hindus and burn down the entire village. They are all Muslim. Why they have such enmity with us, we do not understand”, said the girl’s uncle.

Village panchayat secretary Pural Ram lamented: “When I returned home at 6 pm, the village felt abnormally crowded. Previously, there had been a disagreement that was settled through mutual understanding. The accused afterward arrived in the form of a crowd. They broke into my house and started hurling obscenities at us. Ilyas was someone I was already familiar with. When I began to explain things to him, the person next to him began to verbally insult me. Then suddenly, Ilyas started to assault me. My granddaughter was also been up. My entire family was assaulted,” exclaimed Pural Ram.

“We want justice,” stated another elder in the same hamlet. “They were released by the police and are now celebrating. The police took no action against them”, the elder person remarked.

Meanwhile, many other villagers present there demanded in unison that the accused be charged with molestation and attempted murder. They criticized the police for being sympathetic towards the accused rather than helping the victims.

The media learned that the local police station in-charge Dilbagh Singh, who is suspected of protecting the accused, is already under investigation since villagers had accused him of faking cases and threatening to murder them when he was stationed in Shankargarh district in Balrampur in 2020.

Investigation order against Dilbagh Singh

When Media contacted Dilbagh Singh to know his perspective he said that “right now, law and order is perfectly normal in the village. He maintained that the action taken by the police in the case was completely warranted and added that some communal-minded people have tried to misrepresent the entire situation.

“There is social harmony here, and everyone will have to go back to living together after a while. The oath-taking video is being scrutinized. After the investigation is concluded, the police would evaluate the situation accordingly,” Dilbagh Singh told Media.

Interestingly, Dilbagh Singh is quite active on TikTok. He frequently posts videos on the Chinses App. Answering the ‘Questions I get asked’ trend on TikTok, Dilbagh Singh had once said: “I’ve worked in the traffic department for a long time. Many videos have been produced to raise awareness. In none of my videos have I sent out wrong messages to the public. The age of social media is here. I’ve also been using social media to keep in touch with individuals. Due to the lockdown, I also worked in a Chhattisgarh film that has yet to be released. Don’t combine my personal and professional lives,” he had said.

References:

opindia.com - Rahul Pandey