A day after the Ram temple was inaugurated in Ayodhya, 22-year-old commerce student Mohammad Tariq offered to help out his father, who runs a tempo transport service in Mira Road, a neighbourhood in the far north of Mumbai.
The regular driver was absent, so Tariq said he would deliver a cargo of empty plastic cans and scrap metal in the area.
Around 7 pm on Tuesday, as he was driving through the Shanti Nagar neighbourhood along with two workers, a mob stopped the tempo and assaulted the three men, all Muslim.
“The name Rashid Tempo Service on the body of the vehicle and a sticker of the moon and stars on the window pane revealed our Muslim identity,” said Abdul Chaudhary, Tariq’s father.
Tariq, who was in the driver’s seat, was the first one to be attacked. He told his father he was slapped by the mob. They then dragged him out. He was kicked and beaten with sticks and a belt. He had blood all over his head, back and hands.
The workers accompanying Tariq, Mehraj Shah, 21, and Deen Ali Shaikh, 45, were injured on the head too. Shah told Chaudhary that before the mob hit them, it demanded that they chant “Jai Shri Ram”.
Mira Road is part of the Mira-Bhayandar municipal corporation area, which has a sizeable Muslim population.
Communal tension had spilled over in the area in the run-up to the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, built on the site where the Babri Masjid once stood. The demolition of the mosque in December, 1992, had led to Mumbai’s bloodiest riots and prompted several Muslim families to relocate to neighbourhoods such as Mira Road.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here .