By PTI
NEW DELHI: Students and activists on Monday held a protest at Uttarakhand Sadan here over hate speeches against Muslims at a ‘Dharm Sansad’ in Haridwar.
Protesters gathered at Uttarakhand Sadan amid heavy police deployment and demanded the immediate arrest of Yati Narasimhanand, Prabodhanand and Annapurna, who delivered hate speeches at the conclave.
At the protest on Monday, a public meeting was conducted in which representatives of various organisations spoke, according to a statement.
Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPI(ML) general secretary, said, “The calls in Haridwar resemble those of the final solution in Nazi Germany! RSS must be defeated with strong people’s movement.”
Organisations like AISA, Anhad, SFI, UAH, NFIW, KYS, AIDWA, DISHA, among others, joined the protest.
The protesters submitted a memorandum to the Resident Commissioner of Uttarakhand Sadan, which demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and immediate legal action against those involved in hate speeches in the Haridwar ‘Dharma Sansad’.
Extremely provocative speeches inciting violence against Muslims were allegedly made by participants at the event held at Ved Niketan Dham in Haridwar for three days from December 16 to 19.
It was organised by Yati Narasimhanand, the priest of Dasna temple in Ghaziabad.
Seventy-six lawyers have written to Chief Justice N V Ramana, requesting him to take suo motu cognisance of hate speeches allegedly made at separate events organised in Delhi and Haridwar.
The letter alleged that the speeches delivered during the events were not mere hate speeches but amounted to an open call for murder of an entire community.
“The said speeches thus, pose a grave threat not just to the unity and integrity of our country but also endanger the lives of millions of Muslim citizens,” the letter said.
“It is also pointed out that the recent speeches are a part of a series of similar speeches that we have come across in the past. Thus, urgent judicial intervention is required to prevent such events that seem to have become the order of the day,” it read.
The letter has been signed by senior advocates Salman Khurshid, Dushyant Dave, and Meenakshi Arora among others.
An FIR was lodged in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar district against Jitendra Narayan Tyagi and others in connection with alleged hate speeches delivered at a ‘Dharma Sansad’ to incite violence against the minorities.
The second event was organised by the Hindu Yuva Vahini in Delhi.
Tyagi, who changed his name from Waseem Rizvi after converting to Hinduism earlier this month, and other speakers at last week’s event have been accused of making extremely provocative speeches, and some video clips of the same are doing the rounds on social media.
The FIR was registered under IPC section 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language), and the matter is under investigation, the police said.
The case was registered on the basis of a complaint by a resident of the Jwalapur area in Haridwar.
At the event, several speakers allegedly made inflammatory and provocative speeches calling for the killing of people from the minority communities and for taking up arms and shooting a former prime minister.
The ‘Dharma Sansad’ was allegedly organised by Yati Narasimhanand Giri of Juna Akhada who is already under police scanner for making hate speeches and inciting violence against the minorities in the past.
Alleging that the recent hate speeches at the ‘Dharma Sansad’ in Haridwar were made with the blessings of the BJP government in Uttarakhand, AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday demanded that the guilty be arrested and said issuing an FIR was not enough.
“This type of ‘Dharma Sansad’ happened with the blessings and full support of BJP government in Uttarakhand. This type of things were spoken with their support. It is not enough if an FIR is issued. They should be arrested,” he told reporters here.
The organisations concerned should be banned under UAPA and then only there would be deterrence, he claimed.
He alleged that a “call was given for open genocide against Muslims in the country” at the Haridwar Dharma Sansad.
Asked about Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav allegedly remaining silent on the issue, he said all political parties in the country who believe in the Constitution and trust the rule of law and not anarchy have to “break their silence”.
He also sought to know when the Samajwadi Party or Congress would speak on such an issue, if not now, as hate speeches were also made involving former PM Manmohan Singh.
“Their silence exposes them and it tells us that they are silent because they are concerned that they will not get the other votes,” Owaisi said.
An FIR was lodged in connection with alleged hate speeches delivered at the Dharma Sansad in Haridwar to incite violence against the minorities.
The BJP last week refused be be drawn into the row over “hate speeches” made at the Dharma Sansad held in Haridwar, saying questions about them should be directed to those behind the event.
Two more persons have been booked in connection with hate speeches delivered against Muslims at a Dharma Sansad in Haridwar recently.
The names of Swami Dharamdas and Sadhvi Annapurna were added on Saturday in the FIR lodged after available footage of the event was scanned, Haridwar Kotwali SHO Rakinder Singh said on Monday.
Initially, only Waseem Rizvi, who had assumed the name of Jitendra Narayan Singh Tyagi after converting from Islam to Hinduism, had been named in the FIR lodged on Thursday last week.
The FIR has been lodged under Section 153A of the IPC (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language).
Extremely provocative speeches inciting violence against Muslims were allegedly made by participants at the event held at Ved Niketan Dham in Haridwar for three days from December 16 to 19.
It was organised by Yati Narasimhanand, the priest of Dasna temple in Ghaziabad.
