Responding to the recent protests about namaz offerings in public spaces, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has come out and said that the duty of his government is to maintain law and order and namaz should not be observed at public spaces.
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His statement comes in the backdrop of protests by some organizations against namaz on public land in Gurugram, Haryana, earlier in April.
About 500 Hindu activists on Monday took to the streets to demand a ban on the act of offering Namaz on open spaces and government land, performed without taking prior administrative permission, as reported by Times of India. Besides this, the outfits also demanded the scrapping of FIR against six men who were arrested for ‘disrupting’ a Friday Namaz supposedly being offered on government land.
With regards to the FIR, the six individuals were arrested by the Gurugram Police last Thursday after a video of them trying to ‘disrupt’ the outdoor Namaz, went viral on social media.
They were granted bail on Sunday as the police didn’t follow proper procedure before filing the case. The court also observed that prior permission was not given for conducting these prayers on the land owned by the government.
As per a former Gurugram Bar Association president – Kulbhushan Bharadwaj, the Namaz was being conducted on government land near a temple without permission from authorities. He also claimed that the police had admitted to the Namaz organisers not taking prior permission.
He also alleged that prayer offering group had chanted pro-Pakistan slogans, which was opposed to by the arrested youths. Bharadwaj thus alleged that the police acted in a biased manner and only took action against the protesting youths.