New Delhi: On Wednesday, April 12, Agra police arrested four accused in the case in which members of the Hindutva group Hindu Mahasabha allegedly planted cow meat to falsely implicate Muslim rivals and stoke communal violence ahead of Ram Navami.
Apart from the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha national spokesperson Sanjay Jaat, the police have arrested Saurabh Sharma, Brijesh Bhadauria, Jitender Kumar and three others.
According to a report on the Times of India, they have been charged under Sections 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and sections of the Uttar Pradesh Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act.
As The Wire has reported before, on March 29, on the eve of Ram Navami, members of the Hindu Mahasabha had held protests outside a police station, against the alleged discovery of beef in an Agra cave. Jitender Kumar, a member of the outfit, had filed a complaint alleging cow slaughter.
Agra Commissioner of Police, Preetinder Singh, had told The Wire that this was an attempt to stir communal differences ahead of a big festival.
Singh had also said that the whole thing was planned by Jaat in connivance with some Muslim men.
Speaking to The Wire last weekend, Jaat has claimed that last month his ‘team’ had apprehended two men who were sent to jail on cow smuggling charges. The men, according to Jaat, later asked him if he wanted to stop “other actions of cow smuggling” and led him to the cow meat in Agra. Jaat alleged to The Wire that the two eventually conspired to frame him.
“I trusted him because he swore by Allah that he wants cow smuggling to stop. I had no reason to think that it was a lie because the informant was fasting during Ramzan,” he had said.
Jaat and his group had earlier issued threats to Samajwadi Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya when he spoke against the Ramcharitmanas. He has also been present in protests against the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Pathaan, threatened to install a portrait of Hindutva icon Vinayak Damodar Savarkar inside the Aligarh Muslim University campus, and asked to pray at the Taj Mahal on Shivratri.