In December of last year, Rajasthan’s Rajsamund district witnessed a brutal murder when a man named Shambhu Lal Regar allegedly burnt a Muslim labour alive and circulated a gruesome video of the proceedings on social media.
In order to ‘justify’ this barbaric act of his, Regar alleged that he did so to take revenge for his sister, who allegedly was a victim of love jihad. Regar as per reports had also shown no repentance for his crime, and had alleged that the victim was threatening to kill his family.
Now it seems that the cops have punctured this elaborate ‘love jihad’ theory of his, if reports are to be believed.
As per the charge sheet filed by the police, the accused Shambhu Lal Regar had conjured up a ‘love jihad’ angle, in order to hide an illicit relationship with the woman whom he called his “Hindu sister”.
This charge sheet was filed in the Rajsamand chief judicial magistrate court on Friday, which includes charges of murder, outraging religious feelings and criminal conspiracy. The hearing in this case is scheduled on 17th January.
The charge sheet speculates that the reason Regar came up with the ‘love jihad’ angle to cover his real motive for the murder which was being angry over the fact, that the woman in question, was still in contact with a labourer Ballu Sheikh with whom she had eloped in 2010. Regar then reportedly tried to bring her back to his village, but she refused. The person named Ballu Sheikh belonged to the same village as the murder victim.
This murder of the Muslim labourer had also resulted in communal tensions in the region.
We had reported how section 144 was imposed in Udaipur and Rajsamand after a rally was taken out by Hindu groups purportedly in order to protest against inflammatory sloganeering carried out by Muslims in Udaipur’s Chetak Circle.
As per a tweet put out by a Hindustan Times journalists, Muslim groups had carried out a rally in Udaipur on Friday to demand death penalty against the accused, but it wasn’t confirmed whether this inflammatory sloganeering was part of this protest march.