Senior Congress leaders on Saturday spoke out against the punitive demolition of a Muslim man’s home in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Madhya Pradesh, describing the action as “the height of barbarism and injustice”.
The authorities in the state’s Chhatarpur district on Thursday bulldozed the home of Haji Shehzad Ali after accusing him of involvement in a mob attack on a police station a day prior. Four police officers were injured in the violence.
The incident reportedly occurred when a large crowd was stopped from entering a police station to file a complaint against a Hindu religious leader named Ramgiri Maharaj. The people were protesting allegedly inflammatory remarks that Ramgiri made against Prophet Mohammad while speaking at an event in Nashik’s Sinnar taluka last week.
In addition to bulldozing Ali’s home, the police raided 100 locations and detained over 50 suspects. At least 150 persons were booked in the case.
“Bulldozer justice is totally unacceptable, it must stop,” Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi said in a post on X. “If someone is accused of a crime, then only the court can decide his crime and punishment. But punishing the family of the accused as soon as the allegation is made, taking away the roof from their heads, not following the law, disobeying the court, and demolishing the house of the accused as soon as the allegation is made – this is not justice.”
She added: “There should be a difference between the law makers, the law keepers and the law breakers. Governments cannot behave like criminals. Obeying the law, constitution, democracy and humanity is the minimum condition of governance in a civilized society.”
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge also criticised the state government’s action against Ali and said that “anarchy cannot replace natural justice”.
“The repeated targeting of minorities in BJP-ruled states is deeply troubling,” Kharge said in a post on X. “Such actions have no place in a society governed by the Rule of Law. Offences must be adjudicated in courts, not through state-sponsored coercion.”
Authorities in four Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states and one Aam Aadmi Party-governed state punitively bulldozed 128 structures, mostly belonging to Muslims, between April and June 2022, human rights group Amnesty International said in a report in February.
Madhya Pradesh reported the highest number of demolitions at 56.
This was followed by 36 demolitions in Gujarat and 25 in Aam Aadmi Party-ruled Delhi. Eight properties in Assam were razed during the period and three in Uttar Pradesh.
Amnesty International found that authorities in all five states had used “targeted demolitions” and “forced evictions” as a form of “extrajudicial and collective and arbitrary punishment and retaliation against Muslims speaking against injustices and discrimination they were facing”.
The organisation stated that such demolitions are prohibited under international human rights law and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which India is a state party.
The human rights organisation found that protests by Muslims and violent clashes between protestors and the police had been reported before the demolitions.
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