Cleric alleges he was forced to chant slogans, abused in bus

The two men caught me by my beard and asked me if I was an Indian. When I said I was, they asked me to prove it by chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’

ALTAF ALAM, a cleric at a Bawana mosque

NEWDELHI: A 27-year-old cleric of a mosque in outer Delhi’s Bawana has alleged that two unidentified men forced him to chant religious and nationalist slogans in a DTC bus on Sunday night. When he initially refused to obey them, they allegedly pulled his beard, removed his skull cap and beat him up.

Though the alleged miscreants jumped out of the bus soon after the incident, the cleric decided to pursue legal action against them and called the police.

Rajneesh Gupta, deputy commissioner of police (Rohini), said that a case of causing hurt and wrongful restraint was registered against the suspects at Shahbad Dairy police station the same night. However, the suspects remained unidentified until Wednesday evening.

Altaf Alam is the maulana at the Masjid Abu Bakr Siddique in Bawana’s JJ Colony. He was travelling in a DTC bus operating on route number 116 around 10 pm on Sunday.

“There were around a dozen other passengers. The two men who misbehaved with me boarded the bus around 10 minutes before the bus was to reach Bawana,” said Alam.

“The two men suddenly approached me, caught me by my beard and asked me if I was an Indian. When I said I was an Indian, they asked me to prove it by chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’,” alleged Alam.

“I insisted that I did not have to do that. They responded by raining punches on my face. They also asked me to say ‘Jai Mata Di’ and ‘Jai Shri Ram’,” he alleged.

He claimed that one of the dozen passengers tried to intervene, but he was asked to mind his business. “The others remained mute spectators,” he alleged.

Alam said he decided to give in to the demands of the two men and chanted the slogans after which the men hopped off the bus and fled. Keen to seek police action, Alam kept the bus, its driver and conductor waiting for several minutes in the hope that they would serve as witnesses.

But by the time the police arrived, the bus driver and conductor had left. “I was medically examined and a case was registered by the police,” said Alam.