Six Minor Muslim Students Sent to Jail over Student Clashes in UP

Six minor Muslim students of Gandhi Mohammad Ali Inter College in Belthara Road, Uttar Pradesh, have been sent to jail for getting involved in clashes. The clashes between the students erupted when a video by a priest of Manas Mandir recording the school not allowing students to chant ‘Vande Mataram’ went viral on social media. In doing so, the priest was digging up a five year-old issue of a student allegedly getting beaten up for chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ within the school premises.

The video by the priest was recorded on October 5 and the incident happened three days later on October 8, when few students from the school started chanting 'Vande Mataram' and 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. They alleged that some Muslim students started chanting 'Pakistan Zindabad' and attacked them in response but there has been no evidence or video which has come up, Ballia police claimed on Twitter.

The six students who have been put behind bars are Muhammad Kaif, Tanzil Siddiqui, Muhammad Faizan, Muhammad Chand, Akhlaque, Firoz and Bucchi. They all have been booked under India Penal Code (IPC) sections 147 (Punishment for rioting), 148 (Rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 149 (Joint liability for acts committed by an unlawful assembly), 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 3 (1) (d) (garlands with footwear or parades naked or semi-naked a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe).

School Targeted as it has Muslim Name

Speaking with Newsclick, Kausar Usman, who covered the story for Ballia Khabar, said, "Gandhi Mohammad Ali Memorial Inter College which is situated in Belthara Road is hundred years old and since then no communal clash has been reported till now. There are more Hindu students enrolled in the school compared to Muslim students. The reason to target this school is because it is a minority school, carrying a Muslim name. It is also a trick to defame the Muslims of Belthara. The priest named Shiv Kumar, who recorded the video to encourage communal enmity, is an accused of a communal clash which had happened in 2013 which had been reported by local media."

Usman further added, "The priest, without taking permission from the school, asked a teacher to come out from the school. Following this, Sanjay Kumar Pandey, who teaches Economics in the school,  came out and they both recorded a video which shows that the school allegedly does not allow the chanting of Vande Mataram, which went viral. But the sad part is that all local media outlets reported the incident without any investigation and later on, the mainstream media too followed the news. If Sanjay has a problem that the school does not allow students to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and 'Vande Mataram’, then he should have complained to the school principal instead of giving video interview to a 'priest'. The six minor students who were arrested for allegedly chanting Pakistan Zindabad are totally false, they have been made scapegoats and been falsely framed."

School teacher Sanjay Kumar Pandey told Newsclick, "It is an issue of 2014-15 when a student was beaten by a school teacher for chanting Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Vande Mataram. Recently, the priest of a temple and few local journalists gathered outside the school main gate. When I was entering the school, they asked me whether the school still does not allow students to chant such slogans and national anthem, to which I replied that happens sometimes. After the video went viral, few students were involved in hitting Hindu students of the school but I never heard if they chanted Pakistan Zindabad. But the students were bleeding.” He also added that the school never follows the national anthem and even after prayer, students do not chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai. However, on being questioned why he did not raise the issue with the Principal if he had a problem, he just mumbled that it happens occasionally.

School Principal Denies Alleged Claims

Newsclick also approached the school principal Majid Nasir who told, "It has been 31 years since I have joined the school and the students sing national anthem. We have never stopped anyone. Pandey’s allegation that we occasionally stop is totally false. As far the issue of a student being beaten up over the chanting of Bharat Mata ki Jai is concerned, he later had issued a statement that he was a student of Class Six at that time and there was no such incident. Also, just consider if that incident had really happened, why would his family not lodge a complain? We have never discriminated our students on the basis of religion. You can even confirm with the students that we have never stopped them from singing the national anthem.”

Newsclick tried to reach Ballia District Magistrate Bhawani Singh and Superintendent of Police Sriparna Ganguly, but could not get through as they were in a meeting.