Azam writes to UN about Dadri lynching
LUCKNOW: Senior UP minister Azam Khan has written a letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the brutal killing of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh’s Dadri village on the suspicion that he had stored and consumed banned cow-meat.
Khan has also sought time from the secretary general to discuss the incident.
Alleging that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, fear among “Christians and Muslims” had increased, the minister said, “The Dadri lynching is ‘proof ’ that aggression of the RSS has increased manifold.”
Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Khan said, “The RSS is completing 100 years in 2025 and wants to ensure the country’s conversion to Hindu Rashtra by 2022-23.”
He clarified that approaching the UN was “not going against the country.”
He said, “In my personal capacity I have requested the UN to look into the miseries of Muslims and to ensure that the Indian government allows secularism and pluralism to flourish and doesn’t let extra constitutional authorities within the country to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra.”
Before the press conference three small video clips were shown in which some people were seen raising questions about Modi’s secular credentials outside the UN.
Khan said: “I don’t have any great expectations from the UN either. When we are unable to get justice in our own country, what can we expect from outside. Still, we will raise the issue in the larger interest of the minorities and to foil the RSS-BJP plan of making India a Hindu Rashtra.”
He claimed the ongoing police investigation in the Dadri lynching “points to some grand design.”
Asked about the repeated communal flare ups in Uttar Pradesh and the Samajwadi Party government’s inability to check them, he said, “Having tasted blood in terms of electoral victory in 2014 general elections, after Muzaffarnagar (riots), in which they accused me as well of inciting hatred, the saffron brigade have been busy arousing passions in a systemic manner. Police investigations would soon be out. My government has not only applied soothing balm to victims but also acted swiftly against hate merchants.”
When asked if his government would act against BJP lawmaker Sangeet Som and VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi for giving inflammatory speeches, he said, “That’s the beauty of democracy. But we did control the situation quickly to foil the designs of the hate brigade.”
Khan also dragged union home minister Rajnath Singh into controversy saying that area (around Dadri) was the “rajninitik kshetra of Singh’s son. Singh’s son Pankaj is state general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
On his statement urging Hindus to bring down all five star hotels that sell beef in the same way as the Babri mosque was brought down, Khan said, “Ayodhya is a dark chapter in the country’s history when the elected government of the state lied on oath and went back on its words of protecting the religious rights of a community.”
Khan also alleged that he had “heard that BJP lawmaker Sangeet Som” -- an accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots case -- “too had a stake in one of the slaughter houses. Som immediately denied the charge.
Khan also claimed that BJP and VHP leaders owned several slaughterhouses though he could not build on the rather sensational allegation. All he did was give the instance of one Al-Kabir slaughter house, whose owner he claimed, was a Hindu.
Praising the media for what he called foiling a conspiracy plan to “kill” Muslims, he claimed that the Sangh Parivar and the BJP were deliberately stirring the communal pot to make political gains in poll- bound Bihar and to keep Uttar Pradesh communally charged ahead of the 2017 UP polls.