Kunwar Bharatendra Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Bijnor, was elected as member to the Court of Aligarh Muslim University today. Singh was accused of provoking communal tension in Muzaffarnagar district, and was arrested in October 2013. This appointment has come close on the heels of the exoneration this Monday of six of the eight accused in the murder of a Muslim youth, Shahnawaz Qureshi, by the Special Investigation Team probing the Muzaffarnagar riots of December 2013. Qureshi’s murder led to the lynching of two members of the group—Sachin and Gaurav—which is believed to have been one of the causal factors of the riot. In our March 2014 issue, Anjali Mody chronicled the events that culminated in riots in a district that was largely accustomed to the peaceful co-existence of its different communities. In this excerpt from that story, Mody gives us a a perspective on the political forces that were involved in escalating latent communal tensions.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 11:11:55 +0000
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