On Tuesday, July 4, at around 11am, Sayyad Yousufuddin, a resident of Telangana’s Gajwel town, learned that members of local Hindu groups were gathering outside Tanjamul Masjid. The situation was tense. The mob, numbering around 300, was formed by people who were part of a protest rally taken out in response to the alleged desecration of a Shivaji statue by a Muslim man a day earlier.
It was for the first time in life that Yousufuddin was experiencing a Hindutva mob’s ire in his hometown of Gajwel, part of the Gajwel Assembly constituency, represented by K Chandrasekhar Rao, the current Chief Minister of Telangana. Yousufuddin, who was inside the mosque, said he was fearful of what would happen next.
“There were only four of us inside the premises of the mosque including me, the mosque committee’s general secretary when the mob arrived,” recalled 48-year-old Yousufuddin, the president of the Tanjamul Masjid committee, while speaking to TNM. The mob stayed for 45 minutes, allegedly shouting Islamophobic slogans and pelting stones. They dispersed after the police arrived and shifted their protest to the Shivaji statue. Yousufuddin said police responded diligently to their call for help.
Following the July 3 incident, members of the Bhagat Youth Association registered a complaint at the Gajwel police station. The group took affront to the alleged desecration of the base of a statue of 17th century Maratha king Chhatrapati Shivaji by Mohammad Imran, a Muslim resident of Sangapur village. A case was registered and Mohammed Imran was arrested soon after…
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