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Asar Indori, one of the four lawyers who comprised a fact-finding team that visited Tripura, said he was surprised to receive the notice because the team had merely shared what they had seen and heard. Tripura Police, he said, seemed to be suffering from some misunderstanding. The lawyers would fully cooperate with the Police, he said, to remove any misunderstanding that might have arisen.Mosques, houses and shops belonging to Muslims were vandalized, looted or set on fire last month in Tripura following attacks on Hindus during Durga Puja in neighbouring Bangladesh.The fact-finding team had recorded statements and taken photographs of the mosques vandalized. But Facebook live of a press conference they addressed at the Press Club of India in Delhi and the team’s social media posts seem to have invited action under UAPA. The team were told by villagers that while many of their Hindu neighbours came to their rescue and in at least one case prevented the mob from looting a computer shop owned by a Muslim, the mobs were led by ‘outsiders’. In a show of unity and harmony, the Hindu residents of Boxanagar area of Sepahijala district repaired a Panjakhana (Muslim prayer hall) which was partially damaged by miscreants.While Tripura Police has steadfastly denied the occurrence of any “ major communal violence”, it agrees that forces are on alert, that it prevented a flare up and intensified its patrolling in troubled areas.In an extraordinary exercise, Tripura Police is said to have identified 78,000 Twitter handles, only 30 of which used by people within the state, which shared video clips and photographs of the violence. Since the tweets originated outside Tripura, it was concluded that this was part of a conspiracy. But while Sepahijala District police clarified that no major incident had taken place, police in Naraura confirmed that an abortive attempt was indeed made to damage the moktab/ mosque.The chairperson of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has expressed concern over attacks on Muslims in Tripura and urged the Union government to “stop violence against religious communities”.The violence took place during a rally taken out by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on October 26 in North Tripura in protest against the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh. The High Court of Tripura has initiated a suo motu PIL. By the time the fact-finding team of lawyers reached the state from Delhi on October 30, Indori recalled, violence had already stopped. So, how could we have caused any disturbance, he wondered aloud.The team comprising Supreme Court lawyer Ehtesham Hashmi, Advocate Amit Srivastav from Lawyers for Democracy, Advocate Ansar Indori of the NCHRO and Advocate Mukesh, on behalf of the PUCL released their findings on the communal violence in Tripura, at Delhi’s Press Club earlier this week. The UAPA notice requested them to “immediately delete these fabricated and false statements/comments made/circulated by you in the social media”, and directed them to appear before the West Agartala Police Station by the 10th of November 2021. Freelance journalist Samriddhi Sakunia, who had been live-tweeting and sharing news of the violence in the state, reported The Leaflet, quipped, “Tripura Police is really trying hard to nab down people who are talking about the Tripura violence”, and noted how the police was checking her claims on social media instead of going after the perpetrators of the violence.
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UAPA invoked for ‘Tripura is burning’ tweet by journalist
