A Hindu mob in Ghaziabad, India, attacked a group of Muslims on Friday night, apparently as an act of revenge for Muslim mobs targeting Hindus in Bangladesh following the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last week.
Hasina resigned and fled the country last Monday after a month of deadly protests. She was on good terms with India during her 15 years in office, which led some of her detractors to denounce her as a puppet of the Indian government. Mobs in majority-Muslim Bangladesh began attacking Hindus and vandalizing their property after Hasina’s ouster.
According to police in Ghaziabad, located in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, a group of about 20 people belonging to a Hindu nationalist group called Hindu Raksha Dal attacked a cluster of shanties near a railroad station on Friday night and destroyed many of their ramshackle dwellings, known as jhuggis in India. The attackers loudly accused their victims of being Bangladeshi infiltrators during the assault.
Hindu Raksha Dal and its leader, Bhupendra “Pinky” Chowdhary, were accused of several similar assaults over the previous few days. Sometimes they drove off people they accused of being illegal migrants from Bangladesh, and on other occasions, they destroyed, or even burned, the shanties in which their targets dwelled.
Ghaziabad Police Commissioner Ajay Kumar Mishra said the people attacked in his town were not immigrants from Bangladesh, but rather natives of Uttar Pradesh.
“I tried to explain to them that these people are not from Bangladesh, but they continued beating them and damaging their shelters,” police inspector Sanjiv Kumar said of his encounter with Pinky and his crew on Friday night.
Mishra said the police were considering invoking India’s National Security Act (NSA) against Hindu Raksha Dal and using Internet video they created of their own criminal actions as evidence against them. The attackers will be charged with “insulting religious beliefs” in addition to assault and vandalism.
“We are in the process of identifying others seen in the video and they will soon be behind bars,” Mishra promised.
Ghaziabad police said they were also on the lookout for an individual who posted a video on social media threatening violence against “Rohingyas and Bangladeshis” unless they leave India within three days.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka on Friday to protest violence targeting the Hindu minority.
The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) estimated on Friday that 52 of the nation’s 64 districts have witnessed communal violence against religious minorities since Hasina resigned a week ago. One person has been killed and at least 45 injured in these attacks.
“There is deep apprehension, anxiety and uncertainty among minorities across the country,” BHBCUC said in an open letter on Friday.